On July 14, 2023, the Ministry of Science and Technology of the PRC ("MOST") issued the Notice on Updating the Guidelines on Administrative Approval Items and the Scope and Procedures for Filing and Prior Reporting of Human Genetic Resources, which unveiled six documents, including the administrative guidelines on collection approval, biobanking approval, exportation approval and international collaboration approval of human genetic resources ("HGRs"), as well as the scope and procedures for int
On 13 July 2023, the UK government planned increases to fees across a range of immigration and nationality routes including the immigration health surcharge. The immigration health surcharge (IHS) is set to see a huge increase of around 66%. The current standard IHS rate is £624 per person per year of leave to remain granted and this will increase to £1,035. Similarly, the discounted rate for students and under-18s will increase from £470 per year to £776 ...
On 10 July 2023, the Maltese Parliament resolved in favour of several amendments to the Consumer Affairs Act. These amendments serve two purposes. Firstly, the Consumer Claims Tribunal can now hear consumer claims of up to €10,000. This amendment represents a significant increase in the value of the claims that can be heard by the arbiter given the previous threshold of €5,000 ...
Today's judgment from the European Court of Justice ("ECJ") in the case Commission v CK Telecoms (C-376/20 P) provides insight into how the EU merger control provisions should be assessed in consolidated markets, such as telecommunications. Understanding the judgment may be relevant for consolidation plans in many industries with tendencies towards oligopoly ...
In its judgment of 4 May 2023 (Case C-487/21), the European Court of Justice (“ECJ”) specified the scope of the right to obtain a “copy” of personal data in the context of the right of access. The ECJ ruled that the copy must be used to provide the data subject with a faithful and intelligible reproduction of all personal data that are the subject of the processing ...
On 16 June 2023 the High Court handed down its first instance decision in the case of Virgin Media Limited v NTL Pension Trustees II Limited and others, dealing with the impact on amendments affecting contracted out rights of failing to obtain a section 37 certificate ...
We look at the latest events concerning the dispute between the UK Covid-19 Inquiry and the Cabinet Office over the former Prime Minister’s WhatsApp messages and diaries ...
Infrastructure 1 Is your state a party to the New York Convention? Are there any noteworthy declarations or reservations? Yes, Ukraine is a party to the New York Convention. It was ratified in 1960 by the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic (SSR) (as a part of the former Soviet Union). Following the declaration of independence in 1991, Ukraine confirmed its obligations under all international treaties entered into by the Ukrainian SSR, including the New York Convention ...
There are a number of reasons why parties who have agreed to arbitrate disputes (ordinarily by way of an arbitration clause in a contract) may later wish to litigate their dispute in the UAE courts. A common reason is the cost of arbitration, which can be quite significant compared to the cost of litigating in the UAE Courts ...
We would like to inform you that on July 10, 2023 the Federal Law No. 301-FZ “On Amendments to the Federal Law “On Protection of Competition” has been adopted (hereinafter – the “Law”, the “Fifth antimonopoly package”). The Law shall take effect as of September 01, 2023 ...
The court’s decision in Mallory could have profound implications for larger-sized companies that operate in multiple states throughout the country. And nowhere is this truer than in New York, where the state’s status as a global hotspot for foreign investment has attracted myriad out-of-state companies to register to do business within its borders. For over half a century, the U.S ...
As the latest signal in the priority of the Duty to Report in Ohio, the State Medical Board has updated its Duty to Report video.[1] The video is offered by the Board for physicians to fulfill the mandatory continuing medical education (CME) component of the license renewal process in Ohio. Introduced in a new regulation on May 31, 2021,[2] the Board began mandating one hour of CME on the topic of the legal duty to report misconduct ...
A month after nixing the “objectively reasonable interpretation” (Safeco) defense under the False Claims Act, the Supreme Court has vacated and remanded two other cases for further consideration of the defendant’s subjective state of mind when it filed payment claims with the government. The Fourth Circuit in Sheldon and the Eleventh Circuit in Olhausen will provide the first tests of the High Court’s newly minted FCA intent standard ...
On 23 June 2023, the Council of the European Union adopted its eleventh package of restrictive measures against Russia, which supplements those discussed in our previous newsflashes_. This latest package aims to tackle the circumvention of previously adopted sanctions and also adds additional restrictions ...
On June 29, 2023, the Supreme Court ruled in Students for Fair Admissions, Inc., v. President and Fellows of Harvard College and Students for Fair Admissions, Inc., v. University of North Carolina (collectively “SFFA”) that Harvard and the University of North Carolina (“UNC”) violated the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment by impermissibly considering race when making undergraduate admissions decisions ...
The key issue before the formal body of advisers to the UK sovereign was whether the trustee of a settlement “exercised for a proper purpose” an express power contained in the trust deed to add and exclude discretionary objects, having added a purpose trust as an object and removed all family members comprising the entire class of objects. The Background The trust settlors were two brothers who founded Formosa Plastics Group, one of the largest business conglomerates in Taiwan ...
At the end of its 2023 term, the United States Supreme Court handed down several buzz-worthy decisions. Two opinions may have substantial and lasting impacts on employers and their efforts to promote diversity and inclusion. In Groff v. DeJoy, Postmaster General, the Court addressed religious accommodation and clarified the parameters of its “undue burden” standard set forth in its prior decision in Trans World Airlines, Inc. v. Hardison, 432 U. S. 63 (1977). 2023 U.S. LEXIS 2790 ...
Figures published in May by the Department for Business and Trade (DBT) record a further decline in Trade Union membership in the UK. Comparable data is only available as far back as 1995, but shows a clear decline over that nearly 30-year period to a level where, as at 2022, the proportion of UK workers in a union has declined to 23.1% - the lowest figure recorded in that time period ...
On September 17, 2022, Exempt Decree No. 63 of the Ministry of Health was published in the Official Gazette, approving Technical Standard No. 226 of the Ministry of Health, which set forth the obligation to implement a data registration system that allows the traceability of medical devices when they are received by institutional healthcare providers ...
On June 29, 2023, the Supreme Court of the United States handed down its much-anticipated decision in Abitron Austria GmbH, et al. (“Abitron et al.”) v. Hetronic International, Inc. (“Hetronic”) regarding the extraterritorial reach of the Lanham Act, the comprehensive trademark statute in the United States ...
Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act was enacted in 1996 to provide websites with immunity from liability arising from posting third-party content. For a service provider to be immune, however, the information at issue must be provided by another information content provider. This begs the question of whether website operators provide the content on their platforms or act solely as intermediaries for third-party content ...
