Employees, how LinkedIn ARE you?

Say you’ve got over 500 LinkedIn Connections (lucky you), or thousands even, and you’ve recently left your employer and are now hitting up these contacts peddling your particular brand of vodka (or gin), or whatever you so desire.

Can you? Well before you send that mail shot, you might want to take a look at this case from the High Court in London.

Though the Court acknowledges that LinkedIn contacts can constitute confidential information belonging to an employer, what it does not address is ownership of your personal contacts, outside of employer created or controlled LinkedIn Groups (of the kind that were involved here).

Let’s hope this case isn’t a prelude to a time when employees do not own, nor have the right to use, their LinkedIn contacts, even where such contacts were made using a personal and not business LinkedIn account.

The case is Whitmar Publications Ltd v Gamage & Ors [2013] EWHC 1881 (Ch) and you can read the full judgement here.

Your Ferraris are safe for the moment, Mr DeMille

Well here’s an interesting decision from the High Court in London.

Broadly stated, it addresses the question of whether a copyright owner has a proprietary interest to assets purchased from the proceeds of an infringement.

The Claimant film studios (Warner Bros, et al) had already been successful in their infringement actions and though the Defendant company had closed down, the owners had acquired significant assets (cars, homes, etc) using the proceeds of the infringement. The assets were already subject to a freezing order, but the studios sought to claim a proprietary interest in the assets.

To me, it seems as though the studios were trying to shortcut the application of existing remedies to lay claim directly on assets purchased using the proceeds of infringement. This may be only a narrow point of law, but I think the Court was right to reject it.

That said, from a practical standpoint, it may not make any difference because a claimant can always collect money damages from any non-exempt assets a defendant owns. But the Court seems to be saying that the burden is on the party so seeking to make a recovery to prove traceability of assets and not simply be given a carte blanche proprietary interest in all assets.

Of course, there are well reasoned arguments (with which I concur) supporting the judgment, which are summarised here.

Pussy Control?

I had been watching this case develop and it now turns out that posters promoting the “Pussy” energy drink have been banned by the ASA for being “likely to cause serious and widespread offence.” To which all I can say is: Hello Boys!

Seriously though, if Eva was thought to be too risqué, then the people involved with marketing this drink should have known better. After all, they’re no virgins!

You can read more about the decision here:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2013/apr/24/pussy-energy-drink-ads-banned

Fat chance of winning!

Just as some in America finally seem to be getting a grip on its obesity epidemic, comes this.

Christina Pagliarolo, who took part in an episode of the Rachael Ray show, is suing the show for injuries including being humiliated by the personal trainer hired by the show to help her lose weight.

The teen, who at the time weighed 260 pounds, turned to Ray (pictured above) for help.

I’m gonna go out on a limb here and say that Pagliarolo should really watch what she eats and do some moderate exercise (no, changing the channel remote control doesn’t count) instead of going on a national TV show only to find out that she can’t run fast enough.

You can read more about it here:

t.com/2013/04/17/rachael-ray-show-sued-overweight-teen_n_3099971.html?utm_hp_ref=media&amp

You’re FIRED . . . and rightly so!

A former winner of the popular BBC television show The Apprentice has lost her employment tribunal claim for constructive dismissal against Lord Sugar’s IT firm Viglen.

Stella English, 34, told the tribunal that she had no real job at Viglen and resigned from the £100,000 a year position later suing for constructive dismissal. 

In a statement released after the verdict, Lord Sugar, pictured above with English (no doubt in happier times) stated that he found Ms English an “‘untrusting and suspicious person’ who was full of conspiracy theories.”

So far, no comment from Ms English.

You can more about it here:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-kent-22123912

Two months salary . . . at a COSTCO?

When is a “Tiffany” ring not a “Tiffany” ring? When it’s sold at COSTCO, that’s when.

According to a recently filed lawsuit, a customer at the Huntington Beach, California COSTCO store alerted Tiffany to rings being sold for half their Tiffany retail price.

An investigation by Tiffany reveals that the rings were genuine fakes as opposed to an attempt by COSTCO to trade off the idea of a selling “Tiffany style rings” by drumming up sales of clearly non-branded goods by reference to the famed jeweler. That would be a different lawsuit altogether.

Only time will tell how this will play out though, but my money’s on Tiffany to win this.

You can read more about the lawsuit here:

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887324432004578304362559348462.html

Google’s Half a Million Dollar “Giveaway”

It’s often said that in business, you get what you pay for. It’s also said that something given away for free has no value. Perhaps Google should have minded this because a French court has fined the company $660,000 for providing its Google Maps service . . . for free.  Yep, that’s all it took.

The court upheld an unfair competition complaint against Google for providing free web mapping services to some businesses. Though it might sound a little odd to the untuned ear, the ruling does raise an important question. In flooding the market with a no cost service, can a (now) dominant provider abuse its position and unfairly stifle competition by continuing to provide its services at no cost thereby making it impossible for junior users to enter the market?  Oui, says the French court.

Presumably then, Google and companies similarly placed could charge a nominal fee to use its service, thereby maintaining their position as market leader and allowing others to at least try to compete. Although, companies should be careful to not run the service at a loss as that would likely meet with the same judicial response.

You can read more about it here:

http://searchengineland.com/french-court-fines-google-660000-dollars-google-maps-109930

First thing is to kill all the lawyers!

Think there are too many lawyers out there already? Yep, you’re probably right. And many of them, don’t have jobs, nor good prospects of getting one any time soon.

But that’s not stopping hordes of students signing up to study law even if their chances of being gainfully employed upon graduation are looking even more grim. According to a recent article in the Guardian, only one fifth of Bar Course graduates will ever work as a Barrister and competition for Solicitor’s training contracts remains fierce.

And it’s no better across the pond where it seems students are routinely suing law schools for misrepresenting placement statistics. Really? Law Schools do that? I’m shocked.

Anyway, you can read more about it here:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/law/2011/nov/25/law-graduates-bleak-future-bar

Less said the better!

Ever wanted to mouth off about someone or something online? Sure, go ahead by all means, just be careful what you say. Oh and truthful, because there really is no such thing at anonymity on the web and the powers that be will come to get you!

But this is frequently forgotten by folks who post things that they would never say in person. Always remember boys and girls that libel laws follow you into cyberspace. And your ISP will have no problem unmasking you! That’s all.

For more info and helpful links: http://blog.ceb.com/2011/11/16/cyber-slamming

Have your balls and keep them?

Well here’s an interesting, if not altogether confusing decision from the High Court in London.  Is the court really saying that one spouse has no right to the other’s lottery winnings, absent a few exceptions (well this IS the law so there are always exceptions)?

If so, the moral of the story is, buy your own lottery tickets, don’t spend the money of anything for or used by your spouse (e.g., matrimonial property), and then walk away with the winnings!

If only. Bear in mind that this case arose in the context of division of martial property upon divorce and so it’s open to see how this would be applied in other situations.

I’m off to pick my numbers now.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/personalfinance/8832648/Spouses-have-no-right-to-lottery-winnings.html