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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…

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…

Beware — Adverse Action may result in reinstatement

In Brief The last thing any employ­er wants is to be forced into rein­stat­ing an employ­ee after a messy gen­er­al pro­tec­tions dis­pute. Until recent­ly, most gen­er­al pro­tec­tions claims have result­ed in either the dis­missal of an employ­ee or an award of dam­ages and com­pen­sa­tion. How­ev­er the recent case of CFMEU v Pil­bara Iron…

Update on Parental leave

On 1 Octo­ber 2012 the bal­ance of var­i­ous pro­vi­sions of the Paid Parental Leave and Oth­er Leg­is­la­tion Amend­ment (Dad and Part­ner Pay and Oth­er Mea­sure) Act 2012 will com­mence. This piece of leg­is­la­tion in par­tic­u­lar, amends two pieces of leg­is­la­tion: the Paid Parental Leave Act 2010 and the Fair Work Act…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…

Stra­ta and Com­mu­ni­ty Title Reform in NSW

The NSW Gov­ern­ment has released a dis­cus­sion paper and has sought feed­back and com­ments regard­ing pro­posed reform to the stra­ta and com­mu­ni­ty scheme laws. A sum­ma­ry of some of the key dis­cus­sions points is below: We have more than 70,000 stra­ta and com­mu­ni­ty title schemes worth an esti­mate of $350 bil­lion in total assets…

When Com­peti­tors Steal Staff There Are Legal Consequences

In Brief A com­peti­tor can be made to pay when they poach employ­ees and then har­vest con­fi­den­tial infor­ma­tion those employ­ees have. In the recent deci­sion of Wil­son HTM Invest­ment Group Lim­it­ed & Ors v Pagliaro & Ors [2012] NSWSC 1068, Jus­tice Bergin in the New South Wales Supreme Court deter­mined that infor­ma­tion of the rev­enue lev­els…

Breach of an employ­er’s duty of mutu­al trust and confidence

In brief In Bark­er v Com­mon­wealth Bank of Aus­tralia [2012] FCA 942 the Fed­er­al Court deter­mined that a pol­i­cy deal­ing with rede­ploy­ment, was of suf­fi­cient stature as to ren­der a breach of it, a breach of the employ­er’s duty of mutu­al trust and confidence. Background Mr Bark­er had been employed by the Com­mon­wealth Bank of Aus­tralia…

Are you sure you don’t want to check that? Lia­bil­i­ty lim­its for car­ry-on bag­gage on domes­tic flights

In Brief The emer­gence of Low Cost Car­ri­er air­lines, and the unbundling of checked bag­gage by lega­cy car­ri­ers has result­ed in more air­line pas­sen­gers trav­el­ling with car­ry-on bag­gage only, or using their full car­ry-on allowance and min­imis­ing their checked bag­gage. Sim­i­lar­ly, the emer­gence of smart­phone and tablet PC tech­nol­o­gy has meant…