Osborne Clarke's best legal reads of the week: June 15 - 19
Published on 18th Jun 2015
What are the top legal reads of the week from around the web written by Osborne Clarke’s people? Which posts have been shared the most via social media?
This week we have a jam-packed edition for you. We’ve got a great piece of coverage from The Lawyer on our role in Chris Evans’s appointment as the new Top Gear presenter, OC’s Connected Insights is bursting with new blogs and we announce the new dedicated pensions hub.
Here are this week’s best reads…
This week we announced that OC had won the top role advising Chris Evans’ management company on his appointment as the new Top Gear presenter. Evans’ Zimple Group was represented by Osborne Clarke’s head of digital business Adrian Bott and commercial partner John Davidson-Kelly. They were supported by associate director Tom Harding. Read the article on The Lawyer website here.
A key work programme for the European Commission is its “Digital Single Market Strategy” – the pursuit of a pan-EU market in which, in the Commission’s words, “the free movement of goods, persons, services and capital is ensured and where individuals and businesses can seamlessly access and exercise online activities under conditions of fair competition”. As part of the strategy, the Commission is focusing on the use of geo-blocking of online content (such as films and electronic games) as well as on the retailing of electronics, clothing and shoes. Read the full article on geo-blocking websites here.
This month sees two potentially important developments in respect of the charging of fees to pursue claims in the Employment Tribunal (“ET”). The charging of fees is a highly controversial area. For some, it helps deter frivolous ET claims; for others, the fee system (and the level of the fees themselves) represents a significant barrier for justice for many individuals. Read about the two important developments here. For all the employment team’s recent blogs – visit the June update here.
Back in 1999, the Internet was still new enough to be both exciting as to its nascent commercial possibilities and thoroughly disconcerting when it came to the question of how legal aspects might work. The European Union, taking a lead in the international arena, introduced an entire Directive on the single issue of legal enforceability of electronic signatures and much debate took place over whether ‘click-wrap’, the online equivalent of ‘shrink-wrap’ licences for software, would be enforceable. The Directive on Electronic Signatures arguably did more harm than good, read the full blog post here.
This week, we welcome you to the new OC Pensions hub. Here you’ll find our latest thinking on pensions developments, updates and details of events we’re attending and hosting on pensions law. This week, also sees the launch of the first fully digital Pensions Trustee Update summarising the latest pensions developments of interest to trustees and all those involved with the pensions industry, read it here.
If you have taken a dispute to adjudication and have been awarded most, but not all, of the amount claimed, you may justifiably have little appetite to reopen the same dispute in Court. However, following a judgment by the Supreme Court, you may need to do this if you want to avoid facing a one-way challenge in the future, which could see the amount of the award decrease but not increase.
This decision will have important implications for disputes adjudicated under the Scheme for Construction Contracts 1998 (the Scheme) and is therefore potentially relevant to every construction contract which is subject to English law. Read about some of the recent construction adjudication cases here.
- [Event of the week] Data Protection Officer (DPO) Roundtable Forum in London
Osborne Clarke is pleased to announce dates for its next DPO Forum sessions – the roundtable forum for those assigned data protection and cyber law compliance responsibilities within their organisation. Join the event here.
- [Bit of fun] Osborne Clarke or should we say Spiderman?
The Lex 100 firm fictional characters have been revealed… According to trainees, if Osborne Clarke were a fictional character, we’d be Spider-Man – as we are climbing on upwards. Personally, we think that’s a pretty cool character to get compared to, as superhero’s go. Read the full 100 fictional characters here.
