The Information Commissioner’s Office has recently been given the power to impose substantial fines on organisations that deliberately or recklessly commit serious breaches of the Data Protection Act. There have been warnings that, in the future, prison sentences may even be imposed. In a report by the Information Commissioner’s Office last year, the [...]

Posted: August 20th, 2008 under Business Advisory Services.
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ICANN has recently voted unanimously in favour of extending the number of Top Level Domains (.com, .co.uk, etc.) to allow companies to register their brand names as TLDs, and individuals to register their names as TLDs. Some time next year, therefore, we are likely to see a .tesco and a .microsoft, etc.. ICANN [...]

Posted: July 8th, 2008 under Business Advisory Services.
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A franchise is basically a trade mark licence, with the trade mark owner retaining control over how the franchisee’s business is run, giving assistance to the franchisee, and taking payments from the franchisee. To the outside world, the franchisee is the franchisor. Therefore, it is vital to the franchisor that he does have [...]

Posted: April 25th, 2008 under Business Advisory Services.
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The Consumer Protection from Unfair Trading Regulations 2008 come into force, subject to Parliamentary approval, on 26 May 2008.  They introduce a general ban on unfair selling practices.  They do not repeal the Unfair Terms in Consumer Contracts Regulations.  They repeal the Control of Misleading Advertisements Regulations 1988, and certain sections of the Consumer Credit [...]

Posted: April 3rd, 2008 under Business Advisory Services.
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The IPKat has learnt of another setback for US presidential hopeful Barack Obama. A university student, Stefan Doyno, has challenged his use of the ‘Change Rocks’ slogan, claiming that he has a registered trade mark over the phrase, which he uses on jewellery where you can indeed change the rocks. A visit to the USPTO’s [...]

Posted: January 11th, 2008 under Business Advisory Services.
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