November 2008
Fri, Nov, 28 2008
The owner of a famous trade mark can stop a similar mark being used for completely different goods and services but must show that the new mark will have an economic impact on consumers to its detriment, the European Court of Justice has ruled.
Fri, Nov, 28 2008
EU citizens travelling in other EU countries must be charged no more than €0.11 plus VAT per text message compared to the current EU average of €0.29 if the European Parliament backs a proposal that was approved by telecoms ministers yesterday.
Thu, Nov, 27 2008
Guns N' Roses and frontman Axl Rose have threatened legal proceedings against Dr Pepper over an unauthorised publicity stunt that offered a free bottle of the soft drink to every American in celebration of the band's first new album in 14 years.
Thu, Nov, 27 2008
Consumers across the European Union could be given new powers to join forces to sue a business under plans announced by the European Commission today. Class action lawsuits could be publicly funded under the proposals.
Thu, Nov, 27 2008
The woman accused of using MySpace to bully a vulnerable teenage girl who subsequently killed herself has been found guilty of three charges.
Wed, Nov, 26 2008
The Sun newspaper has been ordered not to use the word 'bloody' on posters in future. The Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) said it was socially irresponsible to use the word in an advert that appeared in a public place.
Wed, Nov, 26 2008
Apple has been told not to repeat a TV advert for its iPhone 3G mobile phone. The Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) said the ad was misleading because it implied that users would enjoy faster download speeds than the device actually achieves.
Wed, Nov, 26 2008
A juror in a sex abuse case was kicked off the case after using Facebook to ask her mates whether the suspect was guilty or not.
Tue, Nov, 25 2008
The powers of Government to share data will be increased under new laws announced yesterday. Legislation will introduce a fast-track procedure to allow data sharing whenever "a robust case" can be made for sharing, said a Ministry of Justice report.
Tue, Nov, 25 2008
The Information Commissioner will be able to perform spot-checks on government departments and public sector bodies to make sure they are complying with the Data Protection Act under new plans announced by the Government yesterday.
Tue, Nov, 25 2008
The Government has rejected calls for a law that would require significant data security breaches to be notified to the country's privacy regulator. It said that notification to the Information Commissioner should be a matter of good practice, not law.
Tue, Nov, 25 2008
Facebook has won a $873m judgment against a Canadian sued for spamming users of the social networking site with "sexually explicit" messages after hacking into the profiles of its members.
Mon, Nov, 24 2008
A restriction on Lloyd's managing agents doing business with non-Lloyd's brokers was lifted last week by an order modernising the way the world's leading specialist insurance market operates.
Mon, Nov, 24 2008
The Government's drive to tackle workplace equality could fail before its Equality Bill is even made law, according to the results of a survey of more than 1,000 HR professionals. Senior managers are apathetic about the proposed law, it found.
Mon, Nov, 24 2008
Advertising claims made in videos on YouTube are subject to the same standards of truth and accuracy as ads that appear in traditional media, according to a US advertising watchdog. Such ads can escape the UK regulator's remit, though.
Thu, Nov, 20 2008
Employers who negligently fail to prevent bribery by their employees or agents could face up to 10 years in prison under a new law proposed by the Law Commission today.
Thu, Nov, 20 2008
One of the world's biggest law firms is suing a small Chicago-based website for naming the firm and linking to two of its associates' biographies. A judge rejected an attempt to have the case thrown out last week.
Thu, Nov, 20 2008
Online retailers are facing spiralling packaging recycling costs in the run up to Christmas, according to one industry expert. While online retailers will sell more this Christmas than ever before, they will also face a rising recycling bill.
Wed, Nov, 19 2008
A list of members of the British National Party (BNP) has been published online, including thousands of names, addresses and email addresses. The party claims that the security breach was likely to be a deliberate act of 'political malevolence'.
Wed, Nov, 19 2008
European law is introducing a 'three strikes and you're out' law for ISPs to disconnect illegal file sharers "under cover of stealth", according to legal experts. The EU's telecoms reform package could guarantee the legality of such schemes.
Wed, Nov, 19 2008
Dealers and resellers can use a manufacturer's trade mark as a domain name even when their sales are not authorised by the manufacturer, an arbitration panel has ruled.
Tue, Nov, 18 2008
Visa has introduced a computerised credit card which it hopes will help banks battle fraud. The innovation could force other card issuers and banks to implement similar technology, one data protection expert has said.
Tue, Nov, 18 2008
Yahoo! co-founder Jerry Yang is quitting the company's CEO post, five months after rejecting a $47.5bn takeover bid from Steve Ballmer and Microsoft.
Tue, Nov, 18 2008
The European Commission has launched a consultation on how it can strengthen the European Union's response to computer attacks. The Commission is canvassing views ahead of a debate early next year about an EU-wide co-ordination of computer security.
Mon, Nov, 17 2008
Internet shoppers who wait until December to look for a Christmas bargain may save more money than they thought when HM Revenue and Customs eliminates customs duty on personal purchases costing less that £105.
Mon, Nov, 17 2008
Public authorities who want to keep information secret to protect the commercial interests of companies they work with must explain exactly what damage will be done by disclosure, the Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) has said.
Thu, Nov, 13 2008
Customers should no longer be able to buy Payment Protection Insurance (PPI) at the same time as taking out a loan or credit, according to the Competition Commission.
Thu, Nov, 13 2008
The European Union and the US should only be allowed to share individuals' personal data in criminal cases if people can take the authorities to court when they get it wrong, one of Europe's top privacy officials has said.
Thu, Nov, 13 2008
A law criminalising denial of service attacks and the supply of hacking tools has been brought into force in England and Wales after a number of delays. The law was already in force in Scotland.
Thu, Nov, 13 2008
Artists have unanimously backed a proposal to award resale royalties to artists after their death, the UK Intellectual Property Office (UK-IPO) has said. The art trade has almost unanimously rejected the plan.
Wed, Nov, 12 2008
Lego has failed in its bid to register the shape of its play bricks as trade marks. A European court said that the brick shape was functional and that it had to be that shape to operate as it did, so could not be registered as a trade mark.
Wed, Nov, 12 2008
Insurance price comparison sites have improved the clarity and fairness of the information they provide but could still be clearer about the details of policies they provide quotes for, the UK's financial regulator has said.
Wed, Nov, 12 2008
Search engines in Argentina have been banned from linking to stories naming up to 100 famous people including football legend Diego Maradona in a move critics have said is tantamount to censorship.
Wed, Nov, 12 2008
Phone retailer Phones 4U did not respect consumers' rights and engaged in mis-selling, telecoms regulator Ofcom has said. Phones 4U has said that it has changed a number of its practices in the aftermath of a six-month investigation.
Wed, Nov, 12 2008
The Government has asked businesses whether they back a set of consumer protection laws proposed by the European Commission. If the proposals become law then retailers across Europe will have to offer the same consumer rights.
Tue, Nov, 11 2008
A contract based on a mistake by one of the parties can be valid even if the other party to the contract is aware of the error, the High Court has ruled. The case concerned mistakes that did not form terms of the contract.
Tue, Nov, 11 2008
A Code of Practice for resolving workplace disputes has been approved by the Department for Business and awaits final Parliamentary approval. The revised Acas Discipline and Grievance Code of Practice is shorter and simpler than its predecessor.
Tue, Nov, 11 2008
US consumer regulator the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) will examine the market for patents to outline to industry the implications of recent legal changes which, it says, are "poorly understood".
Tue, Nov, 11 2008
The emerging privacy law in the UK is not the work of one rogue judge, but the result of rulings in a number of courts by a number of judges, a leading privacy expert has said.
Mon, Nov, 10 2008
UK consumers should be able to demand refunds for faulty goods despite attempts by the European Commission to undermine that right, the Law Commission and the Scottish Law Commission have said.
Mon, Nov, 10 2008
Visa cards with a built in one-time code generator are to be trialled by four European banks. The technology is designed to tackle the growing problem of online credit card fraud.
Fri, Nov, 7 2008
Companies should go out of their way to stop workplace bullying even though there is no specific anti-bullying law, an employment law specialist has warned. Today is Ban Bullying At Work Day.
Thu, Nov, 6 2008
The House of Lords has voted to amend the law to help innocent people have their DNA samples removed from the Government's DNA database. The Lords have passed an amendment to the Counter Terrorism Bill.
Thu, Nov, 6 2008
A person does not have to be identifiable by name for details of their computer usage to be protected by data protection laws, a senior European privacy watchdog has warned.
Thu, Nov, 6 2008
The growing number of companies using blogs to communicate with customers and business partners could be exposing their business contacts to malicious computer code, a security firm has warned.
Wed, Nov, 5 2008
A new domain to be launched in December will be the first to reject advertising, making it unattractive to most cybersquatters. The .tel domain will not host websites, only contact information that will be sent to computers and phones.
Wed, Nov, 5 2008
The FSA has resisted calls for a full-scale debate on the regulation of with-profits funds, but it has promised a major review of how effectively life companies are implementing its current rules.
Wed, Nov, 5 2008
Virgin has dropped its High Court law suit against Sky after the two companies agreed to show each others' television channels on their respective cable and satellite TV networks. The suit claimed that Sky broke competition law.
Wed, Nov, 5 2008
Social networking site MySpace will place advertising on some user-uploaded videos that will be recognised by advertising software. The company has signed a deal with MTV to allow uploads of its video content to remain online and attract advertising.
Tue, Nov, 4 2008
Content published on user-generated encyclopaedia Wikipedia might soon be usable along with content from other open source information projects. The licence under which Wikipedia is published currently makes that impossible in most cases.
Tue, Nov, 4 2008
Courts cannot assume that online material has been read without some evidence in libel cases, a court has ruled. The court cannot simply infer from statistics on website visits that certain people have read a particular article, it said.
Tue, Nov, 4 2008
Electronic crime is becoming more common and more sophisticated, partly because the UK police response is inadequate, large firms have said. Most do not report e-crime because they do not have faith in investigating authorities, a survey has found.
Tue, Nov, 4 2008
Virgin Atlantic has dismissed 13 staff because of comments they made on social networking site Facebook. The staff, all cabin crew, broke the company's policies, the airline said.
Mon, Nov, 3 2008
If an employer dismisses an employee on suspicion of age discrimination, that in itself is not age discrimination, an Employment Appeals Tribunal (EAT) has ruled.
Mon, Nov, 3 2008
Another Government contractor lost track of equipment containing citizens' personal data, newspaper reports have revealed.
Mon, Nov, 3 2008
One of the US's highest courts has ruled that business methods cannot be patented unless they meet a test laid down by the Supreme Court. It has overruled a test set by a lower court and narrowed the scope of business method patents.
