On 13 April 2018, the High Court handed down a landmark judgment which represented the first English court ruling on the so called ‘right to be forgotten,’ established by the Court of Justice of the European Union (‘CJEU’) in Google Spain SL v. Agencia Espanola de Protection de Datos (Case-C-131/12) [2014] QB 1022 (‘Google Spain’). / read more

On 21 June 2018, the Supreme Court of the US issued its highly anticipated decision in a case that has been referred to as the US state tax case of the millennium. At issue in this landmark case was a law enacted in 2016 by the State of South Dakota, which imposed sales tax registration, collection and remittance obligations on out-of-state retailers with no physical presence in South Dakota. By overturning the ‘physical presence’ requirement, the Supreme Court was in fact overturning a 51-year-old standard that had dramatically changed the state tax landscape in the US. / read more

The Düsseldorf Higher Regional Court has recently prohibited grey market sales of luxury cosmetics both on- and offline. With this landmark decision, a higher German court has, as far as can be seen, for the first time recognised that manufacturers of luxury goods can put a halt on the sale of grey market goods if their products are sold in an environment potentially damaging to their reputation and image. / read more

The High Court of Australia dismissed a special leave application by online gaming company Valve Corporation, which operates the Steam game distribution platform. The decision makes it clear that the provision of computer games via the internet constitutes the supply of ‘goods’ in Australia and has important implications for businesses who supply goods or services to consumers located in Australia. / read more

The judgment of David Stone earlier this year in this High Court case has received relatively limited publicity. Yet it has much to teach us, from both the contentious and the non-contentious standpoints. With regard to the former, the judgment gives a useful demonstration of how the courts decide whether or not an application for a mandatory interim injunction should be granted and, with regard to the latter, the case highlights the risk of software licensees being 'locked out' of their software and data in the absence of contractual safeguards. / read more

Two recent cases have seen the High Court of England and Wales issue injunctions to tackle cyber attacks by ‘persons unknown,’ which includes the first known worldwide freezing order issued against persons unknown. / read more

The judgment of the UK High Court in Al-KO Kober Ltd and Mr Paul Jones v. Balvinder Sambhi (t/a Torquebars) (‘Al-KO Kober v. Sambhi’) demonstrates that the Data Protection Act 1998 (‘DPA’) can be a useful tool in combating online personal smear campaigns by competitor businesses. The judgment also shows that an application for an interim injunction in a case of malicious falsehood will face significant challenges, but that a judge may still grant the relief sought if the defendant can offer no sensible explanation for their belief in their own statements. / read more

This case saw the UK High Court indicate a broad scope for the sui generis database right (the ‘Database Right’) found within the EU Database Directive 96/9/EC, which rightsholders have found difficult to assert against a third party in light of numerous Court of Justice of the European Union (‘CJEU’) decisions in this area. / read more

A recent High Court judgment, while providing a useful illustration of the application and development of recent case law on contractual interpretation, also acts as a cautionary tale to software developers, licensors and their customers to ensure that the scope of the definition of the ‘software’ which is being licensed or assigned is consistent with the intentions and expectations of the parties. / read more

The UK High Court has rejected a trade mark infringement claim brought by the well-known UK catalogue retailer Argos (‘Argos UK’), against a US based company which legitimately and coincidentally shared the Argos name (‘Argos US’) but which used Google’s AdSense programme to direct adverts to UK consumers who mistakenly ended up at Argos US’s website. / read more