Way more than an everyday interest in IP
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The Administrative Appeals Tribunal decided at the end of August 2014 that the prior registration of “Melbourne Children’s Psychology Clinic” as a business name prevented the registration of “Melbourne Child Psychology” and “Melbourne Child Psychology Services” because the latter names were “nearly identical” to the former. Whilst the decision traversed issues of the kind familiar read more…
The gaming industry (and gamers) will be watching two recent US cases with great anticipation. In these cases, law suits have been brought against alleged copycat games, relying on causes of action including copyright, trade dress and patent infringement. The decisions raise the important and interesting question – can you protect the rules and implementation read more…
A Full Court of the Federal Court of Australia held recently that a fairly typical software distribution agreement did not confer on the distributor a right to use source code. One may ask why would the parties need to know? The answer lies in the application of royalty withholding tax to payments made by Australian read more…
There wouldn’t be many people left who haven’t purchased something from overseas. E-commerce is booming here and overseas. But while it’s great for consumers and opens up new markets for businesses, it isn’t without its legal issues. For example, do the rules preventing companies from misleading and deceiving consumers in Australia apply to statements made read more…
The Australian Law Reform Commission (ALRC) released its final report on “Serious Invasions of Privacy in the Digital Era” (Report) yesterday, setting out the detailed legal design of a statutory civil cause of action for serious invasions of privacy. In a report commissioned by the Gillard government in 2013, the ALRC recommends that the cause read more…
The legal consequences of the prank call made in December 2012 in which Australian radio announcers called a hospital in London pretending to be Queen Elizabeth II and Prince Charles asking after the health of the Duchess of Cambridge are still to be determined. On 15 August 2014 the High Court of Australia decided that read more…
As anyone who has read Michael Lewis’ latest book, Flash Boys, will know there is a lot of money to be made and lost through high frequency trading (HFT). Whilst the Australian securities market is structured and regulated quite differently from the US market described by Lewis, there is no doubt that Australia has had read more…
In a rare example of the Commissioner making a determination under the Privacy Act, Aerocare Pty Limited has been found liable to compensate an airline passenger for the manner in which they collected and disclosed sensitive health information about the passenger in an airport departure lounge. The facts and determination Aerocare was acting as a read more…
On 27 March 2014 the Federal Court of Australia decided a case in which it was necessary to form a view of the meaning of one of the National Privacy Principles. Since the National Privacy Principles came into force in December 2001 there have only been two cases in the Federal Court of Australia to read more…