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Trade mark qual­i­ty con­trol sorts the geese from the turkeys

In Brief The recent deci­sion of the Full Fed­er­al Court in Lodestar Anstalt v Cam­pari Amer­i­ca LLC [2016] FCAFC 92 means that it is now not enough to sim­ply have the exis­tence of qual­i­ty con­trol pro­vi­sions in a trade mark licence. The licen­sor has an addi­tion­al oblig­a­tion to active­ly mon­i­tor the per­for­mance…

Do we have to do what we are paid to do?

In Oliv­er Stone’s film Pla­toon, we see the expe­ri­ence of a young recruit in Viet­nam. His sergeant rein­forces his intol­er­ance for any devi­a­tion from the com­mand and con­trol man­age­ment sys­tem at the core of the mil­i­tary in a con­flict zone thus: “Now, I got no fight with any man who does what he’s told…

The Hunger Games have arrived: HR are now the hunted!

One of the pur­pos­es of some­one form­ing a com­pa­ny is to enable an enter­prise to trade to the extent of the resources of the com­pa­ny. The inten­tion of this struc­ture is to allow peo­ple to start an enter­prise — be inno­v­a­tive — and if it does­n’t work, to be able to…

An IP Health Check could save the life of your business

The heart of your busi­ness may well be its intel­lec­tu­al prop­er­ty (“IP”). IP is sim­ply the legal prop­er­ty in the inno­va­tion in your busi­ness and it is that inno­va­tion which dri­ves your rev­enue and prof­it growth. Your IP needs a reg­u­lar health check. It should be iden­ti­fied and pro­tect­ed so that the…

AdWords: Paragons or Parasites?

Sum­ma­ry A recent Fed­er­al Court case has affirmed the posi­tion in Aus­tralia that the use of AdWords gen­er­al­ly does not con­sti­tute trade mark infringe­ment because it does not rep­re­sent trade mark use. AdWords “AdWords” are mar­ket­ed by Google and they can be very frus­trat­ing to the own­ers of well-known brands. AdWords…

Penal­ties in Com­mer­cial Contracts

In Brief In our pre­vi­ous issue, we exam­ined the gen­er­al law of penal­ties in con­tracts, par­tic­u­lar­ly in light of the recent High Court deci­sion, which held that cred­it card late pay­ment fees charged by ANZ were not penal­ties.[1] The sig­nif­i­cance of a clause being regard­ed as a penal­ty is that it is…

Advanced Care Directives

In Brief In this arti­cle, we exam­ine Advanced Care Direc­tives (ACDs) and how they can be used to assist your loved ones to make deci­sions about your med­ical treat­ment in cir­cum­stances where you lack the capac­i­ty to make such deci­sions for yourself.  What is an ACD? An ACD is a doc­u­ment which sets…

Who owns your Intel­lec­tu­al Property?

In Brief Intel­lec­tu­al Prop­er­ty (“IP”) may appear to be intan­gi­ble but it could be the most valu­able asset your busi­ness pos­sess­es. It is there­fore vital to deter­mine who actu­al­ly owns your IP. The own­er­ship of com­pa­ny names and busi­ness names is often a sub­ject of con­fu­sion. The fact that you have reg­is­tered…

The Strate­gic Mar­ket­ing of Innovation

In Brief Inno­va­tion should be the key ele­ment in your busi­ness strat­e­gy. How­ev­er, inno­va­tion only has com­mer­cial val­ue when it sat­is­fies the needs of your tar­get mar­kets By sat­is­fy­ing your cus­tomer’s needs in a unique way, inno­va­tion pro­vides not only increased rev­enue but also jus­ti­fies high­er mar­gins which can be the…

How to sell your busi­ness, tax effectively

Too often busi­ness own­ers fail to take advan­tage of the gen­er­ous cap­i­tal gains tax (CGT) con­ces­sions avail­able when sell­ing a busi­ness. It takes hard work and ded­i­ca­tion to build and man­age a suc­cess­ful busi­ness, but all that effort could amount to very lit­tle if you end up being hit with high CGT…

Trust me — I’m your employer

Com­ing into this sea­son, we tend to reflect on the year that was and what mat­ters most in our lives. For many of us, this will be nur­tur­ing healthy rela­tion­ships. Rela­tion­ships found­ed on trust. This year, I have made it my busi­ness to seek out and spend time with peo­ple who have…

We can’t build our wills on sus­pi­cious minds

What to expect when chal­leng­ing a will made in ​‘sus­pi­cious circumstances’ Key points Courts pre­sume that wills are made valid­ly – that is, that they are pre­pared and exe­cut­ed cor­rect­ly, and that the tes­ta­tor knows about and approves of the con­tents of the will These pre­sump­tions are open to chal­lenge where the…

Cal­cu­lat­ing redun­dan­cy pay­ments does pri­or ser­vice as a casu­al count?

Aus­tralian law has for a long time recog­nised the con­cept of ​“casu­al” employ­ment. It is gen­er­al­ly under­stood that casu­al employ­ees are engaged on an ​“as need­ed” basis. There is no oblig­a­tion on the employ­er to offer a casu­al work and, equal­ly, there is no oblig­a­tion on the employ­ee to accept work when offered…

Envi­ron­men­tal Plan­ning and Assess­ment Amend­ment Bill

The State Gov­ern­ment has released the Envi­ron­men­tal Plan­ning and Assess­ment Amend­ment Bill 2017. The Bill is on pub­lic exhi­bi­tion until 10 March 2017. Pro­posed amend­ments of note include:Devel­op­ment Applications The require­ment to give rea­sons why a DA was deter­mined the way it was. The rea­sons are designed to inform the com­mu­ni­ty as…

The Fair Work Com­mis­sion — Has it lost its way?

Trust — the key ingredient There is no mys­tery as to what lies at the heart of healthy staff/​management rela­tion­ships in a busi­ness – the key is trust! (See my Decem­ber post) So, what hap­pens to employ­ment oppor­tu­ni­ties in our coun­try when the busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty los­es faith in the Fair Work Com­mis­sion…