Posts under ‘Regulatory changes’

The IPKat, reporting from the Fordham IP Conference, recently noted the upbeat tone of the keynote delivered by Victoria Espinel, White House IP Enforcement Coordinator.  While new technology may have rendered effective copyright enforcement a daunting prospect, and in the minds of some a losing battle, Espinel’s keynote at the conference, and the Obama Administration’s [...]

270,000 businesses start up in Britain every year, and the new Start Up Britain intitiative hopes to promote entrepreneurship by offering reading material, business resources, discounts and a variety of other assistance.  Some legal resources are also available, to help new businesses steer a clear path through swathes of regulation, manage risk, and to offer [...]

Last week Azrights announced the launch of its trademark registration white labelling solution for law firms.  It is the first comprehensive trademark white labelling service for UK law firms. UK Regulatory considerations The impetus behind it was the Solicitors’ Code of Conduct Rules 8 and 9 which prohibit fee sharing with non lawyers, and regulate [...]

Copyright is a hot topic at the moment, especially following the PM’s announcement that UK copyright law is to be reviewed with a view to potentially incorporating fair use provisions along similar lines to those in place in the US.  This blog has covered copyright online a number of times before, in the context of [...]

Yesterday in our November newsletter we mentioned the Legal Services Act (sign up to receive future editions using the form on the right), and how from October 2011 the Act will allow non-law businesses to own a stake in law firms.  This is expected to signal the full entry into the legal services market of [...]

In previous posts I have commented both on the ‘End of Lawyers?’- a book by Richard Susskind and also on the Legal Services Act, which are two commonly discussed items by those interested in the UK law business landscape. In the ‘End of Lawyers? The Legal Hybrid is already here‘  my message was I already [...]

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 considerations that have been dominating discussion, but on some of the [...]

Amidst opposition within Parliament, considerable protest from thousands, and condemnation from some of the most respected companies in the world, the Digital Economy Bill was made law last week, becoming the Digital Economy Act. Concerns surrounding the potential impact of the new legislation are numerous and varied, but the most controversial aspect of the Act [...]

Nowadays, when high street businesses like Spec Savers offer a choice of designer frames for prescription glasses, it’s easy to forget what the opticians market looked like before it was deregulated.  In those days there was little choice, and opticians dispensed NHS prescription glasses. The legal Big Bang augured by Clementi’s  Legal Services Act 2007 [...]

OHIM, the European Office for trade marks and design registration, has announced that it will slash fees by 40%. This price change could take place in a matter of weeks. At the moment the price of filing for a CTM online is €1600 for an online filing and €1750 for a paper application but after [...]