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What do Early Stage Businesses want from their Lawyers?

July 15, 2010

Before considering what start ups require from their lawyers, it’s worth remembering that many businesses tend to change radically in the early years. A few years after starting up, they may look nothing like their initial...

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Your Business and the Digital Economy Act

July 19, 2010

In view of the controversy surrounding not only its contents, but the way in which it was passed, we had written on the recent Digital Economy Act in an earlier post. In this post I would like to focus not on the broader policy...

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Facebook Facing ‘Frivolous’ Lawsuit?
July 21, 2010

The popular social networking site Facebook, valued in the billions of dollars, is facing legal action brought by a plaintiff who claims to be entitled to the lion’s share of the business. The claim alleges that Paul Ceglia...

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Whistleblowers, Censorship, and Secure channels of Communication: The Afghan War Logs
July 27, 2010

Over 90,000 American military documents relating to operations in Afghanistan have been leaked by the online whistleblower Wikileaks.

Read more about Wikileaks in our earlier post, and on their website.

These previously...

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Video Game Piracy – A Different Beast?

July 30, 2010

Since the release of the latest generation of consoles, the gaming industry has undergone considerable growth. No longer seen as a niche, antisocial pastime, the marketing strategies and innovative approaches to game design employed...

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Digital Rights Management – Keeping Gamers Legitimate

August 3, 2010

Digital Rights Management (DRM) schemes comprise a wide range of techniques used to restrict the use of hardware, software and media – allowing publishers broad control over how the software is used by licensees. Game...

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Challenging ‘Health Claim’ Trade Marks

August 6, 2010

The EU Regulation on nutrition and health claims made on foods (see here) were passed in 2006 to ensure consumers were not mislead by unsubstantiated health claims on food packaging. With a greater interest in health...

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Trade Marks and Branding, a World Apart?

August 9, 2010

In their article earlier this year, the Ipkat drew attention to the fact that there is a marked separation between the worlds of trade marks and branding.

More often than not the two are not addressed collectively, but are...

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Data Protection and Email Marketing

August 16, 2010

When a site stores personal details for subscriptions, memberships or the like, there are certain legal regulations it has to take into consideration to stay on the right side of the law.  The Data Protection Act sets...

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Playing Fair – Apple, Amazon and Freedom from DRM

August 19, 2010

Along with the introduction of digital music purchases, came the rise of DRM restricting how it could be used.  With traditional media, music was generally freely playable and transferable, but over the past decade we have...

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iPads, Kindles, and eBook Piracy

August 23, 2010

As more of us buy E-readers to read books digitally, the much discussed “death of the book” debate resurfaces.  Will digital books replace actual physical copies? Reportedly, on Amazon more people are buying...

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The Banking Bailout and BP Oil Spill – Lessons for SMEs and why a New Legal Service Model is Needed

August 24, 2010

When something bad happens to a big, well known business, we’re all surprised. Recent examples are the bail out of the Royal Bank of Scotland and the oil spill disaster that seriously damaged BP’s brand and finances....

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