Recently in Commercial Law Category

The UK claims that it has secured a breakthrough in negotiations with the EU over the dumping of unwanted fish that do not fit into existing quotas, reports the BBC.

Under the current laws concerning fishing quotas, fish that swim near to the surface and are accidentally caught by fishermen seeking other catches must be put back into the sea dead, rather than landed and sold.

The practice is designed to avoid overfishing, but instead results in tonnes of perfectly good fish being thrown back into the sea every year.

A Sweet & Maxwell survey has revealed that the number of new laws going onto the statute book rose in 2012 for the first time since the Government took office, reports The Financial Times.

The survey showed that 1,466 laws were introduced by the Coalition Government last year, a rise of 111 from the 2011 total of 1,355.

The news prompted commentators to conclude that the Government's election pledge to 'cut red tape' was faltering, although others have pointed to the fact that the Government had a particularly busy year, pushing many reforms through Parliament.

A government proposal to reallocate £1m of fishing quota from large companies to small-scale fishermen has been challenged in the High Court, who must now decide who the fish in the sea really belong to, reports the BBC.

The row concerns the allocation of fishing quotas: effectively, licences to fish that determine who can land fish to sell in the UK and abroad.

The UK Government would like to reallocate around £1m worth of quota from large-scale fishing companies to the benefit of small-scale fishing; however, the UK Association of Fish Producers (UKAFPO) believes that they cannot do this without their permission.

Internet search giant Google is being sued in the UK High Court by rival Streetmap, who claim that their company profile is being damaged because Google's search algorithm preferentially places its own Google Maps ahead of other services, reports Bloomberg.

Streetmap, a UK-based provider of maps for the internet, filed a complaint in the High Court in mid-March this year, contending that Google's search algorithm made its services harder to find.

The news makes Streetmap the second major company to file a lawsuit on similar grounds recently, after UK-based shopping site Foundem launched an action last June.

Several leading MPs have called on the Government to stand firm in opposition to a controversial new financial 'transaction tax' being levied by Europe, which they believe could seriously harm the competitiveness of EU financial markets globally and will have a negative impact on the City of London, reports Reuters.

The so-called EU Financial Transaction Tax (EU-FTT) is being levied by the European Union, although the controversial policy only has support from 11 nations.

The idea was first floated in September 2011 as a way of recovering money lent to financial institutions around Europe during the credit crunch and the subsequent Eurozone crisis.

Westminster City Council has launched an appeal against a High Court ruling that prohibits it from using licence money collected from legitimate sex shops to enable it to enforce the rules against unlicenced ones, reports The Independent.

The case against the council was brought by Simply Pleasure Limited and six other licencees operating a total of 11 sex shops in the Soho and Covent Garden areas of the London.

It is serving as something of a landmark case, as a further 15 councils have backed the action stating that the outcome of the case will have ramifications in their areas.

Thomson Reuters has announced that it will acquire legal information firm Practical Law Company.

Practical Law Company is based in London and employs 750 people there and in New York providing expert-authored, practical legal resources.

The acquisition has been agreed in principle, but is still subject to regulatory approval and closing conditions. It is expected the deal should be approved and finalized in March 2013.

The Financial Services Authority (FSA), the body that regulates the UK financial services industry, this week announced new rules to prevent financial advisors from being paid commissions on the products and services they sell.

The changes are being brought in as part of the Retail Distribution Review, a policy review running since 2010 that has sought to provide greater protection to consumers of financial services.

Under the new rules, financial advisers will be obliged to disclose any connection they have with a company, setting out their costs and the details of where money goes before the customer pays anything. They will also be forbidden from receiving commission for the products they sell.

The carbonating drinks machine manufacturer SodaStream has decided to run 'black ads' in response to a regulator ruling that its £11m Christmas advertising campaign 'denigrated' the bottled drinks industry.

Clearcast is the organisation used by broadcasters to ensure that any advertisements they run are compliant with the Broadcasting Committee of Advertising Practice (BCAP) TV Advertising Standards Code.

The advertisement, available to view on YouTube, shows regular bottled soda drinks exploding every time a SodaStream machine is used. It includes the slogan "with SodaStream you can save 2,000 bottles a year".

The UK may follow Australia's example, by introducing tough new laws to restrict the designs on cigarette packaging.

Australia's new laws came into effect on 1 December, effectively prohibiting cigarette manufacturers from distinguishing themselves in their packaging designs.

The laws restrict the use of logos, colours and branding.

The UK Government has decided it will implement legal reforms to allow American-style 'plea bargaining' to be introduced into the UK legal system.

The proposed Deferred Prosecution Agreements are designed to tackle economic crimes including fraud, which is thought to cost the UK Economy a staggering £38bn every year.

The proposals come in the wake of other measures to tackle economic crime including the Bribery Act 2010.

A legal row over the next generation of mobile phone networking, known as '4G' or 'Fourth Generation' is threatening to leave the UK far behind the rest of the world according to experts, says The Daily Telegraph.

The 4G network offers users super-fast mobile broadband, allowing them access to content at speeds up to three times faster than the existing 3G network.

After the Government approved it to operate the UK's first 4G network, Everything Everywhere, a new entity formed from a merger between Orange and T-Mobile, will launch in the UK at the end of this year.

The Office of Fair Trading (OFT), the body which regulates how UK businesses compete with one another, has announced that companies which flout UK competition law could face penalties of up to 30% of their turnover, reports The Financial Times.

The OFT has announced that it will now calculate penalties based on a company's turnover for the most recent year during which competition laws were breached, and that these will be as much as three times higher than previous maximums.

Companies involved in the most serious breaches, including leading a cartel or when there is evidence of senior management involvement, will face fines at the upper end of the possible range.

A new survey by business ethics consultancy GoodCorporation has found that up to half of the UK's global logistics companies are compliant with the new UK bribery laws, reports the Financial Times.

GoodCorporation are a leader in corporate responsibility and business ethics and has developed an anti-bribery and corruption framework to help businesses test their compliance with the new Bribery Act 2010 which came into force fully last July.

Their investigation into logistics companies has revealed that one third of companies has failed to publicly outline their approach to fighting bribery, in accordance with the law, and almost half have no statement published on illegal 'facilitation payments' which are paid to speed the passage of goods through customs.

The world's largest hotel group, Intercontinental Hotels Group (IHG), this morning stands accused of breaking competition law after allegedly fixing prices with two large online travel agents, reports The Telegraph.

Intercontinental, which operates the Holiday Inn and Crowne Plaza brands, is thought to have entered into deals with online booking agents Booking.com and Expedia to fix the discounts they can offer on their rooms.

Under UK competition law, price fixing is prohibited.