Law and Technology by a firm of Lawyers in Scotland
Victoria Moore joined the Tecnology Information and Outsourcing Group (TIOG) at Brodies last month from Bird and Bird in London.
Victoria is a returning Scot.
You can read more about her, and see her photo, here.
Once she gets over the culture shock of the move back Victoria will start blogging here.
Will McIntosh joined Brodies last month.
Will is a corporate lawyer : dealing with murders and acquisitions etc. However, he has a background in technology. In paticular in relation to funding technology companies, setting up technology parks/institutes and university spin-out work.
He was also named as ”Corporate Lawyer of the Year” at the Law Awards of Scotland 2009/2010
You can read more about Will, and see his photo, here.
I have persuaded Will to become one of our bloggers – so hopefully you can read some of his stuff fairly soon.
p.s. – I know it should be “Mergers and Acquisitions.” My typo is a homage to American Psycho
p.p.s – Will is not a Psycho.
..following on from my posts about using a competitor’s brand as a Google Adword (or indeed as a keyword in any online advertising system) Martin and I have come up with some new lingo.
“BAdword” an Adword that is a competitor’s brand or trade mark.
If you like this then you will probably like Wired’s Jargon Watch Section. Here is a link to the April 2010 Jargon Watch.
A client asked for a list of all the interesting work the Brodies’ Technology Information and Outsourcing Group had carried out in the last 12 months.
We listed it all in a document. That was OK, but a bit dull. So we put the document through a word cloud generator and came up with this
I know it looks a bit janky at this resolution, but still, it is pretty cool.
Update – Click on the picture to see it at a better resolution.
We put the word cloud at the front of the document. It looks fantastic. I think I’ll be using word clouds a lot more from now on.
In a shameless attempt to copy us the Brodies’ Planning Team has launched its own blog.
If planning law is your thing you can find it here http://planningblog.brodies.com/.
As with our blog you can subscribe for RSS Feeds, Email updates and all that clever web2.0 stuff.
The content should be good – Brodies’ planning team is top ranked in Scotland. To quote the Chambers’ guide to law firms “This planning practice is indisputably one of the best in the country, with a dedicated core of six planning partners.”
Upcoming changes to the law mean that keeping information secure is a subject that has to be taken more seriously than ever before.
From 6 April 2010, the Information Commissioner’s Office (“ICO”) will have a statutory power to impose a financial penalty of up to £500,000 on any organisation which has committed a deliberate or reckless breach of any of the principles in the Data Protection Act 1998 (“DPA”), which would cover failing to take appropriate data security measures, where that breach is of a kind likely to cause substantial damage and/or substantial distress.
The Government is also consulting on whether to make an order under the Criminal Justice and Immigration Act 2008 which would introduce custodial sentences of up to two years for those guilty of offences under Section 55 of the DPA. Section 55 offences are committed through the deliberate or reckless misuse of personal information, such as that where a member of staff accesses customer information and sells it or discloses it for unauthorised purposes.
These changes are a response to the ways in which technology has transformed the use of data to deliver goods and services. The data held by companies is rapidly increasing, in volume and value. The risks attached to data security breaches are becoming ever greater, with the bar set to rise dramatically in April. Vigilant implementation of an effective data security policy is therefore vital for any organisation and management who fail to act accordingly are leaving themselves potentially exposed.
We are co-hosting a free seminar on information security along with Trustmarque Solutions at the Radisson Blu Hotel in Edinburgh on 24th February. Trustmarque Solutions is one of the largest software licensing companies in the UK and an acknowledged specialist in all facets of software management. Trustmarque and Brodies have organised this seminar to raise awareness of data security issues, from both a legal and a practical perspective.
At the seminar Brodies will discuss the essential elements of an effective data security policy and Trustmarque will make you aware of technology and management processes which will help you to implement your policy successfully.
There are still some places left for the event. If you are interested in attending, please contact me at john.mcgonagle@brodies.com or my colleague Emma Lawson on emma.lawson@brodies.com.
I thought I’d cook up a little blog post about the EC’s recent decision to grant special legal protection to Neopalitan pizzas. Pursuant to Council Regulation (EC) No 509/2006 on “agricultural products and foodstuffs as traditional specialities guaranteed”, the EU’s quality food board has granted the Neopalitan pizza coveted Traditional Specialty Guaranteed (TSG) status.
A TSG is a trade mark granted by the EU to protect agricultural products or foodstuffs which have certain features setting them clearly apart from other similar products belonging to the same category. TSG foodstuffs must be manufactured using traditional ingredients or production processes.
TSG is not to be confused with similar-sounding EU “indications of geographical origin”. To receive TSG status a product doesn’t have to be manufactured in a specific geographically delimited area. This sets the TSG protection apart from the PDO (“Protected Designation of Origin”) and PGI (“Protected Geographical Indication”), separate protections arising where a product is traditionally and at least partly manufactured within a specific region.
You can chew over the distinctions by conjugating and deliberating the following local examples in a Masterchef style. Orkney Beef is protected by PDO; Scotch Lamb, Arbroath Smokies and Scottish Farmed Salmon are protected by PGI; and across the border English food manufacturers have left no doubt as to the traditional nature of their fare by claiming TSG status for ”Traditional Bramley Apple Fie Filling” and “Traditional Farmfresh Turkey”. (The applications for “Really Traditional We’ve Been Making It For Years Deep Fried Mars Bar” and “Come On Big Man, Of Course It’s Traditional Macaroni Pie” are surely imminent.)
Returning to Neopalitan pizza, the practical upshot of all of this is that only pizza made according to the Neapolitan tradition can now be called “Neapolitan Pizza”. Theoretically, pizza restaurants and pizza manufacturers across the globe will have to conform to a strict list of ingredients and a specific method of cooking if they want to label their pizza “Neopolitan”. If they don’t then they could be subject to a fine (to a maximum of 35,000 Euros), or even imprisonment.
According to the original application by the Naples pizzaiolo (pizza-maker) association, to make a pizza in the traditional Neopolitan way you must use durum wheat flour, sea salt, fresh yeast, genuine mozzarella cheese from the milk of buffaloes (rather than cows) and San Marzano tomatoes (from Mount Vesuvius). There’s also various requirements as to size and diameter.
You may find the existence of this Traditional Specialty Guaranteed protection rather surprising, and perhaps even a little ridiculous. Personally I admire how the people of Naples are proudly defending their creation, and I’m sure it had absolutely nothing to do with trying to make some cash. I do however wonder how rigorously the legal protection can actually be enforced.
While I hope everybody gets a slice of the pie, I wish them luck, because they’re going to knead it.
I’m now starving – vending machine here I come!
In the news this week was a patent infringement claim from Kodak against the makers of the BlackBerry. This is not the first attack on the BB, and the iPhone is subject to a number of IP infringement claims. I guess everyone wants a share of the presumably huge profits these devices make.
Ignoring the merits of the claim can I, with the greatest respect, ask Kodak to BACK OFF.
I love my BB, and I don’t want anyone to take it away. My wife has a different view. She now deliberately books holidays in places with poor reception!
In that contex I did hear about one law firm limiting the amount of time per day their lawyers could use their BB’s – a sort of tacograph for lawyers. Interesting.
Perhaps there is an employment law issue here. I asked Tony Hadden in Brodies’ employment and pensions team (the top ranked team in Scotland) and this is what he said “While there is no case law here (yet), there may be a problem in terms of the Working Time Directive which theoretically limits the amount an employee works to 48 hours a week. Also Recent European decisions (Stringer and Pereda) have emphasised that the Working Time Directive relates to health and safety and employers need to understand that they have an obligation to ensure that employees hours do not impact on their health”.
Here is what I say “Euro Wimps”! What is wrong with ignoring your spouse, kids and friends to check your BB every twenty minutes in the evening and at weekends?
Actually, I think I may have answered my own question there.
..and sorry about the lack of posts recently.
Martin and I are involved in a mega deal that was due to close before Xmas, but that has rumbled on into January, John is busy dealing with overflow, and Eleanor is is New Zealand (by far the best option).
I promise we will start blogging regularly again soon.
In the meantime one thought. I have started to see billboard adverts for Google’s browser (Chrome). This is a free product (at least for now). Quite strange I thought. However, on reflection this is probably linked to the EC forcing MS to give Euro users of Vista a choice of browsers. Round 3 of the “browser wars” ahoy.
It’s been quite a year for Twitter. The company was only founded in May 2007, yet has recently been valued at $1bn by investors (yes, really – and that’s an increase of $750m from the January 2009 valuation), and has become the new focus of attention/whipping boy when it comes to social media.
While in 2008 rarely a week went by without a headline splashed across the newspapers about the evils/merits/misuse of Facebook, this year it’s the turn of Twitter. In some cases the actual article makes scant mention of Twitter and is actually about Facebook and blogging, but it’s a sure sign that Twitter sells and that it is now the watchword for “stop press – someone did something silly/funny/embarrassing with social media” stories.
It has been revealed that Twitter is being used by burglars to tell when people are not at home and by street gangs to stir up their beefs with rivals; that it can damage working memory in users; that it’s way to really annoy a potential client by insulting their city; that a Twitterstorm of ire in 140 characters or less results in bad PR across the 4th estate (cf Trafigura, Jan Moir); as does getting your assistant to do your tweeting, and that Stephen Fry saying he’d give up tweeting is big news.
Most recently, the Global Language Monitor (no, me neither) has declared that Twitter is the most popular word of 2009, it is revealed that Twitter can help with earthquake response and that Twitter’s DNS was briefly hacked by the Iranian Cyber Army.
Understandably, a lot of people just can’t see the point of Twitter, as at first glance it’s not very exciting. It’s just a stream of SMS-style posts on a web page – but then, like everything 2.0, it’s all about the community. Having blown hot and cold myself, I’m still tweeting, for now, but if I stop I doubt I’ll get quite the same reaction as Mr. Fry.
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