Way more than an everyday interest in IP
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The Immigration department’s well publicised 2014 data security breach continues to cause difficulties for the Department. In late January and mid February the courts have issued interlocutory injunctions preventing the removal from Australia of certain asylum seekers pending the outcome of administrative law challenges to decisions to refuse refugee status, based on the Department’s consideration read more…
The Parliamentary Joint Committee on Intelligence and Security published its advisory report on Australia’s metadata retention bill today (Friday 27th). The report is bipartisan, in that representatives of both major political parties agree with its recommendations.
Ordinarily, an arbitral tribunal does not have power to order preliminary discovery of documents that would allow a prospective plaintiff to evaluate whether or not sufficient evidence exists to commence a claim. This was one of the findings of the Supreme Court of NSW in a recent case in which a company suspected that a number of its former senior managers and consultants had misused the company’s confidential information or infringed its IP rights. read more…
Is information contained in a document about a residential property “personal information” about the owners or occupants of the property under NSW privacy legislation even if the document doesn’t directly identify the owners or occupants? This was the question that the Appeal Panel of the NSW Civil and Administrative Tribunal had to consider in Office read more…
The Australian Privacy Commissioner has found that the Department of Immigration and Border Protection contravened the Privacy Act when the Department accidentally published the personal details of almost 10,000 asylum seekers in a document that was intended to provide statistical information about the number and status of applications made for refugee status. The contravention occurred read more…
Today the Australian government introduced its much anticipated bill to amend telecommunications laws to require providers of certain communications services to retain so-called “metadata” about the communications they carry. The government clearly anticipates that the proposals will be controversial – the Explanatory Memorandum accompanying the bill includes a detailed “Statement of Compatibility with Human Rights” read more…
Are health service providers in New South Wales obliged by the Health Records and Information Privacy Act 2002 (NSW) to de-identify medical records on the request of a patient? Not according to this recent decision of the NSW Civil and Administrative Tribunal. On 20 October 2014 the Tribunal dismissed a claim against a local health read more…
The Privacy Commissioner’s determination in the matter of CP and the Department of Defence illustrates one significant difference in the treatment of federal agencies and private sector organisations under the federal Privacy Act. This case involved an employee of the department who had made a claim for worker’s compensation in respect of an injury alleged read more…
I recently caught up on some UK legal developments, and was struck by a decision which held that the English common law did not recognise a lien over intangible property. Much of what the Court of Appeal had to say in its decision is likely to be influential in Australia. The case involved two parties read more…