Hogan Lovells (LexBlog Australia)

Tasked with reinvigorating commonhold, the Law Commission has published a consultation on its proposals to make commonhold a workable alternative to leasehold, for both existing and new homes. Dead duck? As previously blogged, commonhold was introduced in 2002 and was heralded as a new form of property ownership that would address the difficulties faced by...

The Australian National Contact Point for the OECD Guidelines for Multinational Enterprises (“AusNCP”), which handles “specific instances” relating to alleged non-observance of the Guidelines, has released its final statement (https://cdn.tspace.gov.au/uploads/sites/112/2018/10/11_AusNCP_Final_Statement.pdf) on a case concerning the Australia and New Zealand Banking Group’s (“ANZ”) financing of a

The world is slowly taking action against modern slavery. Since the UK introduced the Modern Slavery Act (“the UK Act“) in 2015, a number of countries have followed suit with their own legislative initiatives. The latest country poised to do so is Australia. In 2017, the joint Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade...

In one of the most significant decisions relating to schemes of arrangement in Australia in recent years, the New South Wales Court of Appeal has dismissed an appeal challenging the composition of classes of creditors in the Boart Longyear restructuring. The decision significantly widens the extent to which creditors within the same voting class may...

On 13 February 2017, the Australian Senate passed into law the Privacy Amendment (Notifiable Data Breaches) Bill 2016. This law amends the primary privacy and data protection legislation in Australia, Privacy Act 1988 (Cth), to introduce the long-anticipated mandatory data breach notification scheme. Under this scheme, all agencies and businesses that are regulated by the...

In this IP Enforcement Focus v-log, we report on a very surprising recent decision of the German Supreme Court dealing with illegal file sharing… and visitors from Australia. How does the court view secondary liability of account holders? Are primary claims enforceable in practice for such cases?   Click here to view the V-log IP Enforcement Focus is a series...

By Carolyn Dalton, Executive Director of Policy Australia Pty Ltd As foreshadowed in a previous post in December last year, the Australian Parliament has now passed amendments to the Copyright Act 1968 to enable rights holders to apply for a court order requiring ISPs to block access to websites operated outside of Australia which provide...

By: Carolyn Dalton, Executive Director of Policy Australia Pty Ltd The Australian government has recently announced new initiatives to address concerns about online copyright infringement.  A ‘frequently asked questions’ (FAQ) document about the reforms was also released.  There were two key planks to the announcement: A call to industry to develop a new industry code...

On 5 July 2012, Medicines Australia, the pharmaceutical industry association in Australia, announced the adoption of its new Code of Conduct. Although the Code is not legally binding, it reflects a growing tendency, partly legislative in nature and partly through industry self-regulation, to promote transparency in relationships between the pharmaceutical industry and healthcare professionals and.

In a letter to the European Commission dated 4 December 2009, the European data protection authorities gathered in the Article 29 Working Party claim that the US and Australia are violating their respective Passenger Name Record (PNR) agreements with the EU. The letter – a copy of which was recently published on the website of...