The European Commission unveiled the proposed Omnibus II Directive on 19 January 2011. One of the primary purposes of the Omnibus II Directive is to reflect the changes in the European regulatory and supervisory regime with the establishment of three new European supervisory authorities, one of which is the European Insurance and Occupational Pensions Authority (EIOPA). Omnibus II will also push back the date for implementation of Solvency II to 1 January 2013. In this note we have outlined some of the changes proposed by the Omnibus II Directive.

As previously reported, the Irish Stock Exchange (“ISE”) has recently published new listing rules which require Irish listed companies to comply or explain against additional corporate governance provisions.  These new rules, which are contained in a new Irish Corporate Governance Annex, supplement the existing provisions which require Irish listed companies to comply or explain against the requirements of the UK Corporate Governance Code.  The new rules are effective immediately and therefore Irish listed companies with accounting periods commencing on or after 17 December 2010 will be required to comply or explain against the Irish specific corporate governance provisions.  The requirement to comply with the UK Corporate Governance Code (the “UK Code”) is already in place having applied to Irish listed companies with accounting periods beginning on or after 30 September 2010.

Please click on the title above to view our analysis of the Finance Bill 2011. 

The recent Ryder Cup event in Celtic Manor has once again raised the issue of ambush marketing. With the UK government also taking strong steps to protect the marketing potential of the London 2012 Olympic Games, it has highlighted the importance for anybody associated with the advertising of an event of being aware of the relevant laws.

In this second part of our two part article on cloud computing, we will deal specifically with data protection and security, two issues which are consistently raised by those in the cloud computing industry and their customers.

A US jury has awarded Oracle $1.3 billion from SAP which is believed to be the largest ever award for a case involving copyright infringement. Please click on the title for further information.

A recent European Court of Justice (ECJ) opinion in proceedings between Monsanto Technology LLC v. Cefetra BV & Others may inflict serious harm on the European biotechnology industry.

In its ruling, the ECJ interpreted the EU Biotechnology Directive (98/44/EC) on the legal protection of biotechnological inventions (“the Directive”) as not conferring patent protection in the circumstances of this case. In this instance, the patent protected product, a herbicide resistance gene, was contained in soy meal. However the resistance claimed by the patent did not operate in the soy meal. This function was previously performed in the soy plant, from which the soy meal is processed. Further, the resistance would possibly operate again after it had been extracted from the soy meal and inserted into the cell of a living organism.

UPC Communications Ireland Limited has succeeded in its opposition of the “three strikes” rule being imposed by Warner Music, Universal Music, Sony BMG and EMI Records which sought to thwart illegal downloading and file sharing via the Internet.  

In a recent case the European Court of Justice (ECJ) outlined the circumstances in which trade mark owners who have built up a reputation are entitled to protect their mark against unfair advantage by another party in the context of comparative advertising. In the case of L’Oréal SA v Bellure NV, L’Oréal took an infringement action against companies that sold and marketed imitations of L’Oréal’s well-known perfumery collection. Some of the imitations were being sold in bottles and packaging similar to those of L’Oréal and also possessed a similar scent. These imitations were sold for less than the L’Oréal equivalent and were advertised using a comparative list, which indicated the trade mark of the L’Oréal product it sought to imitate.