Have you ever browsed one of your favourite online retail platforms and noticed an entirely new clothing collection launched by the brand for your metaverse avatar? In February of this year, we stumbled upon Zara’s Valentine’s Tale range. The collection comprised 22 digital assets which included necklaces, earrings, rings and bags that could be purchased for your avatar through Zepeto, which is Asia’s largest metaverse platform ...
Nope, we’re not referring to Elvis Presley’s Suspicious Minds but rather in relation to the perils consumers have been facing when falling into subscription traps set by traders ...
On 29 September 2021, the Hong Kong Legislative Council passed a bill to reform the Personal Data (Privacy) Ordinance (Cap. 486) (PDPO) by introducing a two-tier offence to criminalise doxxing acts, conferring new enforcement powers on the Hong Kong Privacy Commissioner to prosecute doxxing offences and issue cessation notices with extra-territorial effect to demand the removal of doxxing contents by both Hong Kong persons and non-Hong Kong service providers ...
The recent dynamic growth of virtual currencies presents the increasingly realistic chance of creation of an entirely new model of money and payment. Innovations allowing payments to be made at lightning speed, across state borders and outside of official payment systems, are appearing before our very eyes. Such payments are made without the involvement of banks or intermediaries, and often anonymously. This is a revolution not only for traditional payment systems, but also for the law ...
This Article was originally published in Issue 7.5 of the CEE Legal Matters Magazine. Companies around the globe are having to make urgent decisions to keep their employees safe and ensure business continuity in the midst of the COVID-19 outbreak. In order to fulfil these goals, companies need to find the right balance between providing a safe working environment and respecting their employees’ privacy, which can prove to be quite difficult in practice ...
On April 8, 2020, the federal government adopted draft wording presented by the Federal Minister of Justice and Consumer Protection for a draft bill to mitigate the consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic in event contract law in order to protect organizers of recreational events and operators of recreational facilities from considerable outflows of liquidity ...
Solicitor and commercial specialist Ross Woodham takes a technical and commercial look at Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP), as it grows in popularity. VoIP has existed since the early 1980’s, but was only given serious commercial attention in the late 1990’s, since when the use of VoIP-based technology has grown steadily ...
Internet telephones are set to take the global communications industry by storm. Big names like Microsoft, AOL, Yahoo! and eBay are piling into the market and former state-run telecoms providers like BT are also investing. The technology was first developed by the US Defense Department as part of a research project on interconnection in the 1970s. But until recently only techno-geeks have had the interest and ability to make any use of it. But times have changed ...
Effective at noon today, May 29, 2020, Virginia Governor Northam's Executive Order 63 went into effect, requiring face coverings to be worn in certain circumstances. Specifically, a face covering is required for individuals aged ten and older when "entering, exiting, traveling through, and spending time inside" the following categories of businesses: All retail. Food and beverage, but only when reopened for indoor dining. Personal care/grooming - i.e ...
On March 2, 2021, Virginia Governor Ralph Northam signed the Consumer Data Protection Act (CDPA or law) into law. This makes Virginia the second state, behind California, to adopt a comprehensive consumer data privacy law. Like the California Privacy Rights Act (CPRA) and EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), the CDPA creates a number of privacy obligations for businesses and gives Virginia consumers more control over their personal data. The CDPA takes effect on Jan ...
‘Spear Tackle’ Case When Brian O’Driscoll was lifted and dropped unceremoniously by All Blacks Keven Mealamu and Tana Umaga in the first Lions test the issue of spear tackling became a hotly debated topic. Spear tackles have been in the news before and a recent Australian case involving a spear tackle in a rugby league match has reignited the debate on when the courts should intervene regarding violence in sport ...
The Vietnamese Government issued the first-ever comprehensive legal framework on personal data for the country in the form of Decree No. 13/2023/ND-CP dated 17 April 2023, on personal data protection (“DPD”). The DPD, which will take effect from 1 July 2023, applies to agencies, organizations and individuals that are involved in the collection and processing of personal data ...
Many companies are currently facing challenges in relation to the GDPR compliance of their video surveillance. Main issues in this respect are questions related to transparency requirements and information notices, the need for a data protection impact assessment as well as questions concerning retention requirements and retention periods. The German Federal Labor Court (BAG) has recently commented on the admissible storage duration of lawful video recordings ...
You’ve heard of Victoria’s Secret, right! The US company is, of course, a well-known purveyor of lingerie, a product for which there is clearly a great deal of demand: Victoria’s Secret has some 1 000 stores throughout the world, and its turnover in 2010 was an impressive US$5.5 billion. In 2012 Victoria’s Secret lodged an objection to a domain name registration for www.victoriassecrets.com ...
The Norwegian Data Protection Authority has notified Stortinget of an infringement fine of two million kroner and imposed an infringement fine of four million kroner on Østre Toten municipality. In both cases, the Authority emphasizes that it is a clear management responsibility to secure the business against such attacks, and that two-factor authentication, awareness-raising and an appropriate risk and vulnerability analysis are key measures ...
The Virtual Assets Regulatory Authority (VARA) is a regulatory body established by the government of Dubai to oversee and regulate the virtual assets industry. In line with its mandate, VARA has issued a number of rule books, in particular the Compliance and Risk Management Rulebook (CRM), which sets out the regulatory framework for virtual asset service providers (VASPs) operating in Dubai ...
The issue of the Dubai Law No. 4 of 2022 regulating Virtual Assets in Dubai (VA Law) issued in March 2022 created a lot of buzz and further strengthened Dubai’s position as a global hub for digital assets. The VA Law also established the Dubai Virtual Assets Regulatory Authority (VARA) which was tasked with creating a legal framework for virtual assets sector ...
Although the start of 2020 also shook up the M&A world, the market recovered especially in the second half of the year. At Van Doorne, the M&A specialists experienced this in the number of transactions: 32 of them. This puts the firm in 8th place in the Mergermarket Benelux League Table, based on the number of deals. In 2020, in Europe almost $850 billion was spent on a total of 6,658 transactions. This is an increase of 5.6% compared to 2019 ...
From television commercials to naming rights for arenas, the topic of cryptocurrency has been hard to avoid. While cryptocurrency may be virtual, its creation or ’mining’ occurs in the real world. This mining poses a credit risk for utility companies, given the incredible amount of electricity required to operate a “mining” facility. For example, crypto mining company Core Scientific, Inc ...
The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) is modifying the computer program it uses to calculate Patent Term Adjustment (PTA) in light of the recent decision in Wyeth v. Kappos, No. 2009-1120 (Fed. Cir. Jan. 7, 2010). In Wyeth, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit affirmed that the USPTO has been improperly calculating patent term adjustment under 35 U.S.C. § 154(b). The Federal Circuit’s decision will result in additional patent term for many U.S ...
Last year, United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) Director Andrei Iancu noted that artificial intelligence (AI) has the potential to “fundamentally chang[e]” “the legal concepts of inventor or author.”[i] The USPTO recently had cause to consider this issue. On petition, the USPTO considered whether an applicant can name an AI program as an inventor on a patent application ...
The United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) issued a news brief in connection with a further extension of the relief provided under the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security Act (CARES Act). The USPTO has offered patent and trademark applicants and owners an additional thirty (30) days in which to file certain documents and pay certain fees, extending the deadline set by the original notices to June 1st ...
Some experts have described the rise of AI as the next industrial revolution. Generative AI is a powerful tool that can transform how your business operates. However, businesses intending to make use of AI solutions need to understand the benefits and risks of implementing generative AI.1 What is Generative AI? Artificial Intelligence – Generative AI is a branch of AI that uses pre-trained AI models to generate new data including text, images, videos, music, and even computer code ...
