ebusiness

Fladgate LLP acted for the sellers Hyperlink Media Limited and Applied Logics Limited on the sale of the remote online gaming business known as Roxy Palace for a total consideration of £8.4 million, comprising £2m in cash and the issuance of 10,000,000 new Ordinary Shares. Corporate partners Grant Gordon and Alan Wetterhahn advised the clients, […]

The Consumer Rights Act 2015 (Act) has now received Royal Assent, bringing about an overhaul in the law regarding the sale and supply of goods, services and digital content and the law on unfair contract terms. The Act clarifies and consolidates previous legislation, attempting to make it easier for traders and consumers alike to observe […]

IP owners continue to get punishment dished out to them, and not on a consensual basis. A recent decision of the UK’s Court of Appeal has reviewed the rules that dictate when parallel (or “grey”) market product can be rebranded to match the brand used by the market leader in the national market concerned. The […]

Appointing advertising agents or other consultants is a routine job, and no one expects to negotiate over detailed terms of business to do so. But an appointment based on basic, or even no, terms can, in the long run, be worse. Asking questions and simply recording expectations, while both parties are positive at the start […]

2014 is the “Year of the Consumer” and the UK Government is implementing a raft of new legislation which is aimed at giving greater rights to consumers, who will benefit from increased transparency and further information when purchasing goods or services online. The new regulations apply to “distance selling” contracts (where a trader and consumer […]

There are changes afoot to the UK gambling regime. We set out below a short summary of recent key changes. The Gambling (Licensing and Advertising) Act 2014 (Act) received Royal Assent on 14 May 2014, amending the Gambling Act 2005. Under the previous regulatory regime, remote gambling operators situated outside Great Britain were not regulated […]

Last year we reported on the European Court of Justice’s (ECJ) decision in Oracle v UsedSoft (1), in which the court held that a licensee of computer software could legitimately sell it on a second hand basis, where the licence was akin to a ‘sale’ of the software. We commented that, although the case was […]

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 […]

Case law shows that anonymous internet users have no hiding place, says Sophia Purkis. The growth of business conducted electronically has provided those with an eye to innovative commercial development with enormous opportunities. It has also created new challenges for those involved in the prosecution of civil wrongs. The courts have recently re-affirmed that they […]

On 6 September 2012 the US District Court approved a partial settlement of the anti-trust proceedings that were begun by the US Department of Justice (DoJ) against Apple, Hachette, HarperCollins, Macmillan, Penguin and Simon & Schuster(1). The action is only partially settled, because the settlement applies only in relation to Hachette, HarperCollins and Simon & […]

You’ve done it. You’ve successfully registered your UK or European Community Trade Mark (CTM) and then…you forget about it? After all the heartbreak of registering your CTM you must remember to use it! This is particularly an issue in the event that a third party seeks to register a trade mark which is similar or […]

The recent Oracle judgment could trigger a radical change of approach to the resale and licensing of computer software, with implications going beyond narrow technology circles. If you are not intimately acquainted with copyright law and competition law, then it is possible that you may have missed the decision of the European Court of Justice […]