The European Ombudsman, Nikiforos Diamandouros, has published a decision upholding a complaint against the European Commission by Intel Corporation (Intel). The complaint relates to the Commission’s handling of its investigation into Intel’s business activities and, in particular, its record of a meeting with a senior executive from Dell Inc (Dell), one of Intel’s biggest customers. …
On Friday 27 November 2009 the new European Commission, which will begin its mandate early in 2010, was announced by Commission President José Barroso. This announcement followed a week after the appointment of Herman Van Rompuy and Catherine Ashton as the President of the European Council and the High Representative of the Union for Foreign …
The year-end audit process can bring headaches for in-house lawyers. With the financial year for most companies ending on 31 December, the first few months of the New Year bring the deepest scrutiny by external auditors of a company’s transactions and dealings, in addition to year-end procedures being run by internal audit. This increased scrutiny …
Continue reading “Will it be a Happy New Year for your company?”
This article will look at several developments within UK immigration law and procedures that have been implemented over the past two months. These include recommendations for changes to Tier 1 of the Points-Based System (PBS) by the Migration Advisory Committee (MAC), changes to requirements under Tier 2 of the PBS, both for sponsors and sponsored …
A search for the terms ‘surrogacy’ and ‘India’ on Google would reveal that surrogacy tourism in India is on the rise. The trend is attributed to the fact that: the cost of a surrogacy arrangement in India is much lower than other countries; the low income levels of a vast majority of the population mean …
On 3 December 2009, following an action brought by the European Commission under article 226 of the EC Treaty (now article 258 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the EU) the European Court of Justice (ECJ) confirmed that Germany had failed to comply with its obligations under the European regulatory framework for telecommunications (the …
Continue reading “Commission victorious in ‘regulatory holiday’ action brought against Germany”
Although many definitions exist, broadly speaking ‘cloud computing’ is the outsourcing of specified IT functions via the internet (the cloud) to provide or receive services that would otherwise only be available if the end user had installed the appropriate hardware and/or software on desktops, or on local networks controlled by that organisation itself. Such services …
There is no legal definition of the term ‘twilight zone’ (perhaps derived from the cult TV series, the writer would like to think), which is now widely used to describe a period of trading when a company has, or is predicted to have, insufficient cash to pay its debts as they fall due. This might …
Continue reading “The twilight zone: legal issues for directors”
History shows that, at least since the 1950s, the likelihood that any authorised insurance company will not be able to pay its claims in full is reassuringly small. The level and composition of assets required by insurers, and their liquidity in particular, is carefully regulated by the Financial Services Authority (FSA), as is the standard …
Continue reading “What can you do if your insurer goes bust?”
Most members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) have enacted intellectual property (IP) laws either inherited from their colonial past or adopted later as part of a drive to modernise legislation. A shared desire to harmonise national laws in the region culminated in the adoption of the ‘ASEAN Framework Agreement on Intellectual Property …
Continue reading “ASEAN regional co-operation in design and patent rights”