Eoin – Page 35 – Cearta.ie

The Legal Services Regulation Bill has – eventually! – passed all stages in the Seanad

Posted on 3 December, 20157 December, 2015 by Eoin

Pictured left is a thumbnail of a photograph of an advertisment that appeared in last Friday’s Irish Times (click through for the full size photograph, where the advertisment is more readable; it’s not online anywhere I can find). It is an advance announcement of the upcoming vacancy for Chief Executive Officer of the Legal Services Regulation Authority (LSRA). I suspect that, when the advertisment was placed, it was expected that the Report and Final stages of the Legal Services Regulation Bill, 2011 would have been taken in the Seanad last Thursday. However, given the large volume of government amendments to the Bill, the Committee stage spilled over until Thursday, and the marathon Report stage continued through Tuesday and yesterday, when the Final stage was taken. After all the squabbles, all the controversy, and all the amendments, all that is required now is the signature of the President. The advertisement says that, once the Bill is enacted, it is intended to proceed quickly to appoint a Chief Executive and get the LSRA up and running. Presumably, the CEO and other vacancies will appear in due course on the Public Jobs website.

The LRSA will consist of 11 members, with expertise in relation to the provision of legal services; legal education and legal training; competition law and policy; the maintenance of standards in professions regulated by a statutory body; dealing with complaints against members of professions regulated by a statutory body; business and commercial matters; the needs of consumers of legal services.…

The IPO takes down a scammer; and opens the door to restitution claims by rightsowners

Posted on 1 December, 201519 December, 2015 by Eoin

A company calling itself the Intellectual Property Agency Ltd (IPAL) wrote to wrote to holders of patents and trademarks, reminding them that the right required renewal at the UK’s Intellectual Property Office (the IPO), and requesting a fee for the renewal which was considerably greater than the IPO’s.

It’s a pretty common scam. There are warnings against it not only on the website of the IPO, but also on the websites of Irish Patents Office, WIPO, the EU’s OHIM, and the US PTO. Of course, interposing between the IPO and rightsowners, and charging the rightsowners exorbitant fees to renew their patents and trademarks with the IPO, is certainly sharp practice, but it is not necessarily unlawful.

However, the line can be crossed. For example, in the US a criminal case has recently been commenced against the alleged principal in a mass mailing scam targeting holders of US trademarks. Again, in the UK, IPAL went a lot further than many of these scams, misrepresenting that it was the IPO (or, at the very least, officially connected with it). In the Comptroller-General of Patents, Designs and Trade Marks v Intellectual Property Agency Ltd [2015] EWHC 3256 (IPEC) (10 November 2015) (noted here on IPKat), HHJ Hacon held that IPAL had passed itself off as the IPO (the first plaintiff), and that IPAL had infringed trademarks in the IPO held by the Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills (the second plaintiff).…

Access to justice when legal costs are high – 2 updates

Posted on 27 November, 2015 by Eoin

Hard on the heels of my post on access to justice when legal costs are high come two updates.

First, in the UK, the Solicitors Regulatory Authority (SRA) has published a position paper, proposing a new simplified model for principles-based regulation of the solicitors’ profession. A timeline of reform of that profession over the last decade is set out in the image at the top left; click on it (or here) for a bigger version.

Second, the Seanad yesterday continued – and came close to completing – its consideration of the Legal Services Regulation Bill, 2011. Given the controversy that has attended earlier stages of this Bill, the lack of fanfare yesterday and today is remarkable. Perhaps this is the way reform now begins, not with a bang but with a whimper.…

Access to justice when legal costs are high

Posted on 25 November, 201511 August, 2016 by Eoin

I have had occasion on this blog to repeat the old adage that justice is open to all – like the Ritz Hotel. I was reminded of it by two headlines I saw this morning.

The first is from today’s Irish Times:

Judge says courts ‘fearfully expensive’ and ‘accessible to few’

The court system is “fearfully expensive”, “alien” and “truly accessible to increasingly few”, a High Court Judge has said. The courts were a forum that should be engaged only as “a last resort”, Mr Justice Max Barrett added. … “Almost a hundred years after the opening salvos that led to the creation of our present Republic, we have now an expensive court system that remains alien to many and truly accessible to increasingly few.”

Update: Barrett J made these remarks in Traynor v Guinness UDV Ireland [2015] IEHC 732 (24 November 2015) [1], permitting the case to proceed, but recommending that the parties resolve the matter “collaboratively if possible, by mediation if not, by expert decision if necessary and, only as a very last resort, in this fearfully expensive forum” (id).

The second is from the Brief (a daily email newsletter from the Times, which will be made available later in the week here):

We can’t afford lawyers, says public

Lawyers and legal advice are well beyond the budgets of ordinary people, a survey published this week has found.

…

European data privacy rights and democratic politics: a tangled web

Posted on 25 November, 201525 November, 2015 by Eoin

Prof Deirdre Curtin (Professor of European Union Law, European University Institute, Florence; pictured left) will deliver the Irish Society for European Law‘s 13th Annual Brian Walsh Memorial Lecture on the above topic.

It will take place at 6:30pm, tomorrow, Thursday, 26 November 2015, in the Bar Council of Ireland Distillery Building, 145–151 Church Street, Dublin 7 (map here), and it will be chaired by the Hon Mr Justice Frank Clarke (Judge of the Supreme Court). CPD points will be available. Registration is required.…

The present of copyright – where are we now with copyright reform?

Posted on 23 November, 201522 December, 2015 by Eoin

In advance of tomorrow’s event on the future of copyright, I thought I’d write a few words about where we are now with copyright reform in Ireland and the EU. The twin legislative bases for Irish copyright law date from the turn of the millennium: the Copyright and Related Rights Act, 2000 (also here) and the EU Copyright Directive (Directive 2001/29/EC on the harmonisation of certain aspects of copyright and related rights in the information society; the InfoSoc Directive). In Modernising Copyright, in October 2013, the Copyright Review Committee recommended various changes to the 2000 Act to adapt it better for the digital age. The EU Commission is moving towards making recommendations with a similar aim.

In January 2012, the EU Commission began a consultation process on reform of the InfoSoc Directive (SEC(2011) 1640 final) (11 January 2012). In parallel, it considered copyright licensing, intermediary responsibilities (notice and action) and private copying levies (pdf). Although the probable conclusions of the consultation process were leaked in 2014, they were never formally published. Among their number seems to have been a recommendation that the exceptions to and limitations on copyright provided by the InfoSoc Directive should be harmonized at a European level, so that every state should provide for the same exhaustive exceptions and limitations.…

Theseus’ paradox and the Legal Services Regulation Bill

Posted on 23 November, 2015 by Eoin

According to Plutarch, in his famous Lives of the Noble Greeks and Romans, Theseus, mythical king of Athens, after many labours and adventures (shown left), including the slaying of the Minotaur, returned to Athens, where his ship was kept in the harbour as a memorial for several centuries. The Athenians repaired and restored it over time, so that eventually every part of it had been replaced. Theseus’ paradox raises the question of whether something that has had all of its parts replaced remains the same thing. The same conundrum arises with the allegorical axe which has had both its head and its handle replaced several times. The Legal Services Regulation Bill has been amended so much during its labyrinthine journey through the Houses of the Oireachtas that I am reminded of these stories.

Many of its proposals were prefigured by the UK’s Legal Services Act 2007. Writing this morning in the Brief (a daily email newsletter from the Times, which will be made available later in the week here), Dame Janet Paraskeva made two points about the Act which resonate in the context of the current Bill. First, she points out the promise of the Act has not always been fulfilled “not … by any shortcoming in the legislation but by a lack of will to make the practical changes on the ground that would remove obstacles to choice.”…

The future of copyright

Posted on 18 November, 201518 November, 2015 by Eoin

THE FUTURE OF COPYRIGHT

Tuesday, 24 November 2015 – 18:00 to 19:30

FREE – PLEASE REGISTER

Paccar Theatre, Science Gallery, Trinity College Dublin.

Digitisation of creative works and exponential growth of web-based communications have made the enjoyment of music, films, books, TV and much more, almost ubiquitous. Alongside this, fast internet and the increasingly wide use of smartphones and portable devices has enabled users to exchange and easily share these files. Yet, the body of law that has traditionally aimed to ensure an economic incentive and reward to content creators and producers – broadly defined – has suffered for more than fifteen years from an identity crisis.

Join me in conversation with my Trinity colleague Giuseppe Mazziotti in a discussion around the commercial, technological, cultural and societal implications of the current review of the copyright framework undertaken in the context of the EU Digital Agenda, where European policy makers are seeking to ensure a more effective, uniform and acceptable definition of copyright’s scope and of its online enforcement techniques [see COM(2015) 192 final (pdf)].

The occasion for this talk is the publication by the European Parliament of a Review of the EU copyright framework [available here; pdf] which was co-authored by Giuseppe Mazziotti.…