• he judge in the family justice system is ordinarily
  required to exercise an experienced discretion that seeks to achieve fairness
  between adults or the protection and welfare of children. It is to be
  emphasised that in this case Wall J had the comparatively unusual task of
  arriving at an outcome that was solely dependent upon the resolution of the
  law. His first task was to construe the relevant provisions of the Human
  Fertilisation and Embryology Act 1990. His second task was to resolve whether
  the application of the statute once construed breached any of the appellant's
  rights under the ECHR to an extent that could not be justified by the
  Secretary of State.
  
  
  
• The parties represented on this appeal are Natallie
  Evans, the appellant, Howard Johnston the second respondent, the Secretary of
  State for Health, the fourth respondent, and the Human Fertilisation and
  Embryology Authority, the fifth respondent. As in the court below, the
  appellant is represented by Mr Robin Tolson QC and Miss Freeborn, Howard
  Johnston by Mr Moradifar and Miss McKinlay, the Secretary of State by Mr Jason
  Coppel and the authority by Miss Dinah Rose.
  
  
  
• The trial in the family division took place between
  the 30^th June and 4^th July 2003. The judgment is now
  reported at [2004] 2 WLR 713. At the trial there were two claimants, Lorraine
  Hadley as well as Natallie Evans, and their claims were dismissed by a
  reserved judgment dated 1^st October 2003. Mr Justice Wall refused
  permission to appeal on the 6^th October and Natallie Evans'
  application to this court was filed on 8^th December 2003. Her
  application was granted in part at an oral hearing on the 16^th
  January 2004. Lorraine Hadley has elected not to appeal. Natallie Evans'
  appeal was argued on the 23^rd/24^th March. This judgment
  is written by me and LJ Sedley.

Trade mark infringement; when Specsavers went shopping

A dispute alleging trademark infringement between Supermarket giant, Asda, and Specsavers will go to trial in April under an expedited process granted by the High Court on the grounds that the court had "sufficient evidence" that Asda threatened the reputation of its rival.

In the case, reported Tuesday in Times Online, Specsavers claimed that Asda infringed its trademark when it ran an online and in-store advertisement claiming: "Be a real specs saver at Asda."

Guernsey-based Specsavers argued the slogan was sufficiently similar that it was likely to confuse consumers.

The company also objected to Asda's use of two elliptical shapes used by Asda in its signage, which carried the words "Asda" and "Opticians" as similar and also likely to confuse. Specsavers registered trademark includes two green ellipses with "Specsaver" across the two shapes in white lettering

The Heartland Payment Systems [HPY] data breach is the first major information security incident of 2009.

As first reported on Jan. 20, Heartland, the sixth-largest payments processor in the U.S., revealed that its processing systems were breached in 2008, exposing an undetermined number of consumers to potential fraud.

Since then, a growing number of banking institutions have stepped forward to announce that their customers were among those affected by the breach.

• On 19 September 2008 at the Crown Court at Worcester before H.H. Judge Hooper QC and a jury the appellant was convicted of a number of offences arising from his commercial dealing in so-called modification computer chips ("modchips"), which were alleged by the prosecution to be devices, products or components "primarily designed, produced, or adapted for the purpose of enabling or facilitating the circumvention" of effective technological measures within the meaning of section 296ZB of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 as amended ("the CDPA"). The offences of which he was convicted included importing, advertising and offering for sale, selling and possessing such devices in the course of a business. In addition, he was convicted of money-laundering offences relating to the proceeds of his sales of such devices.
  
• The appellant appealed against his conviction with the certificate of the trial judge. We heard his appeal on 23 October 2009.
  

Companies convicted of corporate manslaughter can expect to face very substantial fines next year, running into millions of pounds and seldom anything less than £500,000. In addition, those found guilty of other health and safety offences which cause death are likely to incur a fine of at least £100,000, or even several hundred thousand pounds.

These were two of the key recommendations published recently by the Sentencing Guidelines Council (SGC) in its draft guidelines for sentencing offences under the Corporate Manslaughter Act and for breaches of health and safety regulations which cause a fatality.

Although, in the past, companies could do a great deal that hurt people, the law could not do much to affect the companies. For the early part of its history, the company lay outside of the criminal law. "It had no soul to damn, and no body to kick," observed Lord Thurlow, the eighteenth-century Lord Chancellor. The Catholic Church used to excommunicate very early forms of corporate bodies that had done wrong but that practice was declared contrary to Canon law by Pope Innocent IV at the Council of Lyons in 1245.

⁴

Hoodies – the least of our worries?

[Image: © 2008 Jupiterimages Corporation]

Public tolerance of corporate crime has sunk notably in recent times. A great deal of evidence now suggests that white-collar crime is phenomenally harmful. Worldwide, more people are killed at work and through industrial practices each year (2 million), than are killed by war. Corporate fraud, commercial pollution of the air and water, crimes relating to food hygiene, trade descriptions, pensions, securities, and health and safety all widely affect the public.

The Siegfried Sassoon Collection

'I am a soldier, convinced that I am acting on behalf of soldiers. I believe that this War, on which I entered as a war of defence and liberation, has now become a war of aggression and conquest.'

Using Misleading Keyword Advertising to Draw Consumers Away from Actual Complaint Web Sites

Marketing operations and the Predator -- lessons for marketing technologists

A plan by the European Parliament to restrict the power of national governments to disconnect illegal filesharers has been dumped to win agreement on new telecoms competition laws.

Long-running negotiations over the EU Telecoms Package were completed last night when MEPs agreed to drop amendments that would have made internet access a fundamental right.

US ska-pop band No Doubt - best know for its 1996 hit Don't Speak - has become the latest group to throw a hissy fit over the use of its lead singer’s likeness in a videogame.

The band agreed to lead singer Gwen Stefani’s likeness being used alongside three No Doubt songs included in Activision's videogame Band Hero, but they now object to gamers being able to ‘play’ Stefani alongside songs from other bands.

The Impact of Music Downloads and P2P File-Sharing on the Purchase of Music: A Study for Industry Canada

Description: Industry Canada undertook a music file sharing study during 2006-07 to measure the extent to which music downloads over peer-to-peer file sharing networks, for which the sound recording industry receives no remuneration, affect music purchasing activity in Canada. The data used for this analysis are from a Decima Research survey conducted between April and June, 2006, on behalf of Industry Canada. The report, prepared by University of London researchers, Birgitte Andersen and Marion Frenz, found that music downloads have a positive effect on music purchases among Canadian downloaders but that there is no effect taken over the entire population aged 15 and over.

BlueBeat streaming and selling Beatles albums digitally