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The Legal 500 ranks Lewis Silkin’s employment practice in the top tier again
Press Release
16 October 2017Lewis Silkin has again achieved Legal 500 Tier 1 rankings for Employment: London and Employment: Thames Valley as well as retaining its ranking in Employment: Cardiff.
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Plain packaging: who's next?
Press
16 October 2017Senior Associate, Alan Hunt has been quoted in an article for The Grocer which assesses how the plain packaging of tobacco might impact other UK product branding.
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Alex Kelham comments for Sports Market Intelligence: The lion's share: Premier League v UKIP
13 October 2017Alex Kelham’s article has been published in SportCal which discusses the new UKIP lion (logo) and its possible trade mark infringement on The Premier League.
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Lewis Silkin achieves top tier rankings again in this year's Legal 500 UK
Press Release
13 October 2017It has been another great year of results for Lewis Silkin to maintain top-tier rankings in brand management, employment and media and entertainment and moving up the rankings in two practice areas.
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Brands and IP newsnotes - issue 6
12 October 2017Welcome to the 6th edition of our Brands & IP newsnotes put together to bring you the latest, and most interesting legal developments affecting intellectual property law. In this issue we cover; battlegrounds on Amazon listings, whether prestigious brands can prevent their resellers from selling online, the EU's position paper on IP rights, an quick guide on rights for designs, and trade mark infringements.
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Brexit: EU position paper on IP rights (Brands & IP Newsnotes - issue 6)
12 October 2017On 6 September 2017 the European Commission published its wish list for how it hoped IP rights would be treated by the EU and the UK after Brexit. Five general recommendations were made, as follows:
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Servicing trade mark infringement (Brands & IP Newsnotes - issue 6)
12 October 2017The use of a third party trademark to provide information or describe a service being offered does not necessarily constitute trademark infringement. Where the use of a trade mark goes beyond that and creates an impression in the average consumer that the particular service is authorised by the trade mark owner, this will constitute an infringement.
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Coty: Keeping up appearances (Brands & IP Newsnotes - issue 6)
12 October 2017Can a prestigious brand prevent its resellers from selling online? The question was answered firmly in the negative by the European Court of Justice in 2011. In that case, the court said that the French pharmaceutical and cosmetic brand Pierre Fabre could not impose an outright ban on their resellers from selling online.
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Vexed vexillologists: New battleground on Amazon listings (Brands & IP Newsnotes - issue 6)
12 October 2017The UK’s Intellectual Property Enterprise Court recently found in favour of a brand whose Amazon listing had been high-jacked by a competitor. In very simple terms, manufacturers can create listings for their products on Amazon. Third parties can then add themselves to those listings, and whoever offers the cheapest price is automatically presented as the seller.
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Watching out for individual character (Brands & IP Newsnotes - issue 6)
12 October 2017The EU General Court has dismissed an action to invalidate a Registered Community Design held by Nike for electronic wristbands. The case serves as a useful reminder of the principles to be applied in assessing whether a design has sufficient individual character to be registered.
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Equivalent ways to infringe a patent (Eli Lilly v. Actavis) (Brands & IP Newsnotes - issue 6))
12 October 2017The Supreme Court has had to determine to what extent courts should depart from the literal wording of a patent claim and consider whether equivalent means to those literally specified in the claim would infringe a patent.
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Ask About … Retail, Fashion & Hospitality
11 October 2017Many of our clients in the retail, fashion and hospitality sector face similar HR issues. Each month one of the members of our team will identify an issue, ask how you would deal with it and provide our advice. This month we asked Lucy...
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When does a chat with competitors become illegal?
09 October 2017We all have discussions with counterparts in our industries. Those conversations are often vital to share knowledge, address common issues, and lobby for change. However, conversations with competitors can easily stray into dangerous territory, leading to potentially cartel behaviour.
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WORKSPHERE commended by FT Innovative Lawyers Awards 2017
Press Release
06 October 2017Lewis Silkin’s comprehensive HR service WORKSPHERE has been commended in the FT Innovative lawyers 2017: New Products and Services category.
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Lewis Silkin advises Blend Media in raising £1.5million on its third funding round
Deal
06 October 2017Lewis Silkin has advised its client Blend Media on its third funding round, in which £1.5 million of investment was secured bringing the total to £2.6 million.
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International data transfers - are model clauses now under threat?
05 October 2017Many of you will remember Max Schrems, the Austrian law student who in 2015 successfully brought a case to the European Court of Justice (“ECJ”) that resulted in the “safe harbor” - the agreement that allowed the transfer of EU citizens’ data to the US - being declared invalid.
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James Davies writes for LexisNexis Australia - Robotics, artificial intelligence and work: hope for the best but prepare for the worst
Press
29 September 2017Divisional managing partner, James Davies has written an article for LexisNexis Australia which discusses the impact of robotics and artificial intelligence on the workplace.
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Brexit: from a slow drip to a full-on leak
27 September 2017On 5 September 2017, the Home Office Post-Brexit Immigration Document was leaked to the public. The document – the exact publication date of which we do not know – provides a screenshot of government policy towards EU nationals and their non-EU family members. The document talks about how those individuals will be affected at three separate stages: (1) those in the UK ‘before exit’, (2) those who come to the UK during the ‘implementation phase’, and (3) those who arrive ‘after the implementation period’.
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Lucy Lewis writes an article for The Law Society Gazette on ‘Cardiff: Our launch pad for expansion’
Press
27 September 2017The legal market in Cardiff is thriving, and so is Lewis Silkin’s Cardiff office.
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Court of Appeal orders Hong Kong’s Immigration Department to accommodate same-sex partners as dependants
26 September 2017In a unanimous decision made on 25 September, the Court of Appeal ruled that the Immigration Department’s refusal to issue a dependant visa to the lesbian civil partner of a British expat was not rational.