Insights: Legal Updates - February 2013

The High Court has upheld Cadbury’s right to trade mark the colour purple on its chocolate products. In 2008 the UK Trade Mark Registry granted Cadbury’s application to protect the colour purple for its chocolate product packaging. The trade mark gave Cadbury the right to prevent other people using the colour in respect of “Chocolate […]

Letters of intent are like smoking. Your doctor/lawyer warns against them but, somehow, you cannot give them up. You possibly have a suspicion that the flexibility or vagueness of a letter of intent is of some advantage, or that a signed contract is an unnecessary luxury if the works are proceeding satisfactorily. Let a salutary […]

On 31 January 2013, the Government published draft legislation for inclusion in the Finance Bill 2013 which affects companies (whether UK resident or non UK resident), partnerships with at least one corporate partner and collective investment schemes (Non Natural Persons) owning an interest in UK residential property in excess of £2,000,000. As from 6 April […]

Europol, Europe’s intelligence-sharing agency, has announced it is currently investigating match fixing in football “on a scale that has not been seen before”. The investigation which started in Germany, Finland and Hungary has since been extended to include Slovenia and Austria. It has been running for 18 months and, in that time, Europol has identified […]

What is happening? Under pressure from the EU, the UK government is narrowing the scope of two key anti-avoidance measures that affect the taxation of offshore structures (e.g. non UK companies and non UK resident trusts). A further draft of the proposed new legislation was released on 11 December 2012. The rules will come into […]

According to press reports, the European Commission this week granted Black Forest Gateau, also known as Schwarzwalder Kirschtorte, protected status. The cake, which comes from Germany’s Baden-Württenberg region, takes its name from the “kirsch” from the cherries grown in the Black Forest. The reports suggested that the European Commission had ruled that any dessert that […]

In May last year we provided an update on the new cookie law (The New Cookie Laws – Digesting the Facts) which had been implemented in the UK following an EU Directive (see also The Cookie Diet). The extent to which consent was required from a website user was an issue that was a concern […]