Pub­li­ca­tions

Oct 17, 2012

Twig­gy off the hook — For­rest v Aus­tralian Secu­ri­ties and Invest­ments Com­mis­sion [2012] HCA 39

IN brief The High Court appeal against the Full Fed­er­al Court deci­sion (hand­ed down in Feb­ru­ary last year) relat­ed to con­duct by both Fortes­cue Met­als Group Ltd (FMG) and Mr Andrew For­rest in rela­tion to a breach of con­tin­u­ous dis­clo­sure oblig­a­tions under the Cor­po­ra­tions Act 2001 (Act) and of Mr For­rest’s duties…

Sep 24, 2012

Copy­right and employ­ees: Who owns what? 

In brief — Employ­ment con­tracts and intel­lec­tu­al prop­er­ty rights A recent Fed­er­al Court deci­sion high­lights the need for employ­ers to ensure that as well as clear­ly set­ting out the duties of employ­ment, employ­ment con­tracts also include a com­pre­hen­sive assign­ment of all intel­lec­tu­al prop­er­ty rights, if the employ­er is to be assured…

Sep 19, 2012

Gen­er­al pro­tec­tion pro­vi­sions of the Fair Work Act

In Brief The Gen­er­al Pro­tec­tion Pro­vi­sions of the Fair Work Act (the Act) (being a con­sol­i­da­tion and enhance­ment of var­i­ous employ­ee rights pre­vi­ous­ly con­tained in the Work­place Rela­tions Act) present a sig­nif­i­cant chal­lenge to all employ­ers. The Gen­er­al Pro­tec­tion Pro­vi­sions cov­er, amongst oth­er things,: Work­place rights of the employ­ee (see below). The rights of…

Sep 19, 2012

Overview of Fair Work Act oblig­a­tions for employers

In Brief Expe­ri­ence to date has shown that busi­ness­es are strug­gling to keep up with the dynam­ic indus­tri­al and work­place rela­tions land­scape gen­er­at­ed by suc­ces­sive gov­ern­ments. The pur­pose of this arti­cle is to alert employ­ers to changes of sig­nif­i­cance and to things which need to be addressed urgent­ly by employ­ers…

Sep 12, 2012

Apple v Sam­sung case pro­vides time­ly reminder of lit­i­ga­tion doc­u­ment reten­tion requirements

In Brief A recent case involv­ing Apple and Sam­sung pro­vides a time­ly reminder to busi­ness­es about the impor­tance of prop­er doc­u­ment reten­tion when cur­rent or antic­i­pat­ed lit­i­ga­tion arises.  Doc­u­ment reten­tion in Australia Aus­trali­a’s legal require­ments in rela­tion to doc­u­ment reten­tion are often met with con­cern due to uncer­tain­ty about obligations.  Lit­i­ga­tion is a key…

Sep 12, 2012

Crowd fund­ing — the new source of finance

ASIC has been mon­i­tor­ing the increased use of crowd fund­ing in Aus­tralia for invest­ment purposes. ​‘Crowd fund­ing’ involves the use of the inter­net and social media to raise funds in sup­port of a spe­cif­ic project or busi­ness idea. Project spon­sors typ­i­cal­ly receive some nom­i­nal reward in return for their funds. On 14 August…

Sep 12, 2012

Copy­right and the Dig­i­tal Econ­o­my Issues Paper Released

The high­ly antic­i­pat­ed ALRC issues paper on the Copy­right and the Dig­i­tal Econ­o­my was released on 20 August 2012. The issues paper requests for com­men­tary on over 50 ques­tions relat­ing to the appro­pri­ate­ness of the cur­rent copy­right excep­tions. These also cov­er con­verged media and new tech­nolo­gies in rela­tion to copy­right which…

Sep 7, 2012

High Court — Bar­clay Deci­sion — Stop Press 

The High Court of Aus­tralia unan­i­mous­ly deter­mined that the first instance deci­sion of Jus­tice Tracey in the Fed­er­al Court of Aus­tralia was the cor­rect one, there­by over­turn­ing the deci­sion of the Full Bench of the Fed­er­al Court. Mr Bar­clay was an Aus­tralia Edu­ca­tion­al Union (AEU) rep­re­sen­ta­tive in his work­place, Bendi­go Region­al…

Aug 13, 2012

ACMA agrees to reg­is­ter the Telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions Con­sumer Pro­tec­tion Code

On 11 July 2012, the Aus­tralian Com­mu­ni­ca­tions and Media Author­i­ty (ACMA) agreed to reg­is­ter the new Telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions Con­sumer Pro­tec­tion Code (TCP). Reg­is­tra­tion takes effect on 1 Sep­tem­ber 2012 with phased imple­men­ta­tion over 12 months. The TCP is intend­ed to: align the oblig­a­tions of telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions providers under the Aus­tralian Con­sumer Law (ACL) and the TCP…

Aug 13, 2012

Fol­low­ing can­di­dates or employ­ees on social net­work­ing sites: A minefield

In Brief Social net­work­ing is not a fad, but a fun­da­men­tal shift in the way we com­mu­ni­cate. Thus it is no sur­prise that employ­ers are increas­ing­ly using social net­work­ing sites to vet poten­tial employ­ees and to mon­i­tor the behav­iour of cur­rent employ­ees. How­ev­er, this devel­op­ment rais­es sig­nif­i­cant pri­va­cy con­cerns and can expose…