Corporate and Commercial

Incorporating your Private Limited Company in the UK

September 29, 2010 Capital Markets

That really is a bit of an idiot’s guide to company incorporation, so if you have any questions, get in touch with your lawyer or please do not hesitate to ask in the comment box below. Further, if you have pearls if wisdom you’d like to share, please do so, also, in the comment box below. Happy incorporating and I shall see you in the corporate world very soon.

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How to Dominate the Internet: Book One: Protect Your Brand: Chapter 10 of 10: Commercialise your IP

September 7, 2010 Corporate and Commercial

Once you have fortified your brand with various turrets of IP protection, you may wish to commercialise it. Commercialisation can take many forms, the most common of which are selling outright through either share or asset purchase, licensing and franchising, together with many other different species of commercial agreement.

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How to Dominate the Internet: Book One: Protect Your Brand: Chapter 9 of 10: Further Reading

August 30, 2010 Corporate and Commercial

So that’s a brief introductory guide to protecting your IP online. To learn more about IP law and IP protection, I would recommend strongly that you visit WardblawG’s friends at the award winning IP blog, the IPKat, founded and managed by Professor Jeremy Phillips. Subscription to Jeremy’s Google groups will provide your inbox with a flurry of IP related email gems every day plus pictures of one or two cats in peculiar poses. WardblawG’s Gavin Ward’s cat or, as Jeremy puts it, owner Missy has already made one appearance on Wednesday Whimsies.

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How to Dominate the Internet: Book One: Protect Your BranD: Chapter 8 of 10: Look and Feel

August 25, 2010 Corporate and Commercial

The approach taken in Navitaire was reaffirmed in the recent decision in Nova v Mazooma Games, where it was similarly held that the reproduction of the look and feel of an existing program in original source code did not infringe copyright in the original program. However, both Navitaire and Nova concern programs with high levels of abstraction and may be limited to their facts. It is therefore entirely possible that the “look and feel” of a program in a future case may be protected if there are less abstract concepts and closer similarities between programs. Thus, we may not have seen the end of “look and feel” protection through copyright.

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How to Dominate the Internet: Book One: Protect Your Brand: Chapter 7 of 10: Business Method Patents

August 24, 2010 Corporate and Commercial

WardblawG has 30,000 very meaningful hits to its name, although 1000 of which have probably been made by me, my family and friends. Thank you to everyone who has viewed, subscribed and commented. As promised, today’s post is Chapter 7 of 10: Business Method Patents. Chapters 8, 9 and 10 shall follow, with Part 10 being published on my first day as a qualified solicitor in Scotland.

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How to Dominate the Internet: Book One: Protect Your Brand: Chapter 6 of 10: Design, Right

August 23, 2010 Corporate and Commercial

Once you can sleep at night knowing you have ownership rights, you can decide whether to leave them unregistered or proceed to register them. Unregistered design rights overlap with copyright to an extent and the protection afforded is decent to say the least. Go for registered designs if the design is more complex and vital to your business. If you don’t have the time or the cash for registered designs, just take the cheap practical option of sealing your design in an envelope and mailing them back to yourself through recorded delivery.

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Walls takes Santander and its Bank Charges Case to the ECtHR under Article 6 ECHR: the Right to a Fair Trial

July 23, 2010 Banking and Finance

WardblawG supports the ECtHR move in its entirety and wishes Ms Allison Walls the best of luck. May Justitia swing her sword in her favour.

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My Bank Charges Saga: Part Two (The End)

July 22, 2010 Banking and Finance

Good news! I have been charged only £5.00 for going 70p into the red. Perhaps fair because the bank was paying its own cash to cover the unauthorised overdraft.

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Law 2.0 Search Engine

July 20, 2010 Banking and Finance

Your tutor said research more with this unique WardblawG search engine:-

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Reclaiming Bank Charges in the Tenties: Santander Demolishes Walls

July 15, 2010 Banking and Finance

Comment

In the author’s personal opinion, it is time for the courts and, perhaps, government to stop sitting on the fence with legal argument that lends itself to squeaky clean judges’ desks. It is quite clear that the public has noted its concern. They realise, (or at least should realise by now!), that banks are businesses unlike any other. And, while the banks might enjoy the benefits of having large capital reserves, somewhat questionable following the recession, the Scottish and, indeed, the British public expect them to be treated as such in the legal systems of the UK. This effective immunity from suit should seriously be reconsidered and, the author hopes, soon.

How to Claim despite Walls being breached

Consumers may be best advised to take the recent shock wave of Allison Walls v Santander with a pinch of salt: there are certain steps, including those from moneysavingexpert.com, which are still worth considering:-

1. Send a style letter and send to the bank;
2. If unsuccessful and the bank continues to charge, send a different style letter to the Financial Ombudsman;
3. If still unsuccessful, consult a reputable solicitor and take the bank to court, but be prepared for considerable legal expenses and long, drawn out proceedings.

Banks would be best advised not to get complacent: a battle may have been won; but the war, most certainly, is not over.

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RSS Feeds: the Practical and Legal Considerations

July 5, 2010 Corporate and Commercial

Since starting this blog, I’ve placed emphasis on RSS feeds. Colleagues and readers have been quizzing me on why a legal blog needs RSS feeds and why I don’t spend more time on posts. The reason is that RSS feeds are important tools for modern lawyers and, indeed, professionals around the world. Because of that, I thought it would be useful to set out the practical and legal issues that should be noted and distinguished in order to exploit RSS to its fullest.

In my own experience, RSS feeds avoid the spam-like nature of email updates and allow for fast browsing of updates that suits you, which can help increase your efficiency, productivity, learning and knowledge. Obviously, that demands some initiative on your part, but if you can appreciate how much effort went into each and every post to which the RSS feed links, then it doesn’t take too much effort to get out there and start looking for RSS feeds relevant to you and your clients, such that you can build a collection, much like I have at the foot of this page, for your own personal and commercial purposes.

Alternatively, of course, you could just come to this site to view them all at once. But where’s the fun, (or plug?) in that?

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Take Notice!: Education 4 Ayrshire Ltd v South Ayrshire Council

June 27, 2010 Case Notes

The relatively recent case of Education 4 Ayrshire Ltd v South Ayrshire Council [2009] CSOH 146, CA37/09, concerns the issue of what happens when a contract clearly provides how and when a notice of delay or claims should be given but the parties do not follow the precise form of the notice provisions.

A good theoretical decision in favour of pacta sunt servanda and adherence to what the parties have agreed strictly, it has to be wondered whether this is the right practical decision given that effectively notice, albeit in a different form, had been given. Certainly, I have seen this decision take effect on elements of a recent multimillion pound NPD project, which may have delayed the deal.

The case serves as an important lesson for contractors, not just those involved in PPP / PFI, to take special notice of notice requirements under contracts.

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Alpha Law: Kill or be Killed!

June 26, 2010 Banking and Finance

Written by two US law school professors, it portrays, in no uncertain terms, a rather bleak picture of the landscape of the legal and other top professions…And that was in 2005!

The alpha of any species, by inherent definition, is able to adapt quickly and well to change. It’s now time for lawyers, firms and the profession as a whole to adopt that alpha mentality; for many, it’s time to sink or swim.

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Foreword to the WardblawG: Lawnovation

June 23, 2010 Banking and Finance

With firms and professionals across the UK welcoming web 2.0, which includes new online technologies such as blogs, RSS feeds and even Twitter, so comes the inception, and, I’d like to think, conception of Scotslawblog.com, formerly WardblawG.com.

Founded by me, Gavin Ward, a trainee solicitor at a Scottish firm in Edinburgh, qualifying in August 2010, former tutor and published author in the Juridical Review, this shall be a new platform for me and, indeed, my colleagues and peers across Scotland and beyond, to discuss, in an open environment without too much fence-sitting, the most important and relevant legal and commercial updates affecting Scottish businesses and law firms, together with other topics of interest to the legal profession.

I hope this creates as much contribution and success as the effort I ,and my colleagues, put into it!

Gavin Ward, 23 June 2010

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