Articles by ‘John North’

A study published the week before last explores the key issues of the business and legal sectors with the Unitary Patent (UP) and Unified Patent Court (UPC) and recommends how best to address them.  The study, entitled Exploring perspectives of the Unitary Patent and Unified Patent Court within business and legal communities was undertaken by Dr. Luke McDonagh of Cardiff University.

The Intellectual Property Office (IPO) has recently launched its new online patent renewal service, making it simpler, quicker and cheaper for businesses and inventors to renew their patents.

What is FATCA?The Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act (FATCA), enacted in 2010 as part of the Hiring Incentives to Restore Employment Act encourages foreign financial institutions (FFIs) and certain non-financial foreign entities (NFFE) (over…

A report published at the beginning of the month suggested that London was now considered the technology capital of Europe, after attracting a record number of overseas technology businesses in the last year, with figures revealing that 90 European technology businesses relocated to London, an increase on 2012’s figures, with many starting up in the Tech City area.

Late last week, it was confirmed that a nationwide network of shopping centres and market halls, had become the latest in a large line of retail establishments to succumb to financial difficulties.

As recent figures suggest that January could see the highest deal value recorded in the first month of a year since 2000; additional data has suggested that over the next two years, a third of global businesses are planning a sale.

Tough new regulations are being introduced as the part of a package to crack down on the rogue firms responsible for bombarding the public with misleading advertising and flooding banks with unsubstantiated claims for…

Figures published last month (December) revealed the hotspots for inward investment within the UK during the first nine months of 2013; with London coming out on top – as expected.

Figures released last week revealed that despite a notable recovery in mergers and acquisitions during the final quarter of 2013; it was not enough to prevent merger and acquisition activity becoming depressed overall, during the year.

Changes to the regulation of consumer credit are just around the corner with news that the responsibility for consumer credit regulation is to be moved from the Office of Fair Trading (OFT) to the…

As the government continues its attempt to make complicated legislation more accessible to businesses who must comply with it, significant progress has been made since the Office of Fair Trading (OFT) launched its ‘Unfair…

In Citicorp Trustee Co Limited v Barclays Bank Plc and Others, the High Court has confirmed that there are no special principles of construction which apply to securitisation contracts, the terms of which will be decided “in accordance with the general principles of construction applied by the courts in respect of any document it is asked to construe”.