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Hello again and welcome to a packed January newsletter after our Christmas holiday break. Trust you all had a pleasant break and that since then the start to the year for your business has been most positive.
What this means is that we can offer you even more legal news and views to catch up on.
Starting with IT/IP we can see the power of social networking in action in this case. Lobbying is therefore no longer the sole preserve of powerful consumer groups or specialist parliamentary businesses hired by big corporates and one might hope the “student union” approach of cooperation might spread amongst SME businesses affected by the same issue. This puts a positive spin on the rather negative critiques written of late about such social networking sites.
“Information is power” as they say and it is quite common for businesses to ask whether the Data Protection Act applies to their business and to their paper records. The answer depends on the nature of the information and how you have organised this as we see here.
Disputes about ownership and use of data are today very common in fact - see here and here - and it is now prudent to manage your legal risks by having in place sensible wording in employment and consultancy agreements to permit your business to use data and information without the need to go to court thereby saving you time and money.
With employment law some helpful pointers for business owners were noted by these trio of cases - 1, 2 and 3. Whilst the former case of the aptly named Rascals business indicated a harder line was being adopted against National Minimum Wage transgressions - this in truth being treated as an exceptional case - the latter two indicated that employers will not be held liable for stress and worry related claims where not merited and where the type of loss claimed is too remote - being causally unrelated to any negligence of an employer. This should help stabilise concerns over insurance premiums for all concerned in the immediate future.
Commercially you may be interested to learn of your basic remedies under contract law. Although do be aware that by taking a strong stance and using litigation and interim injunction mechanisms you can prevent misuse of sensitive customer list information and can protect future profit streams and loss of key client accounts and revenue-as we all know that losing good clients is something to be avoided where possible.
Lastly in terms of Company Law/Tax, we advise here that group company structures can be used to shelter tax gains, debt action or employment claims from affecting other entities in the group though, as ever, there are caveats against abuse, so there can be good grounds for having a “corporate family tree”. Tax issues concerning PDA’s are also explored since HMRC now appears to be less generous in the treatment of these and this may impact on many SME’s that use or retail these devices extensively. Of course, if you are a director you should be aware of your duties under the Companies Act which we advise in our company secretarial capacity.
More generally for free initial start up advices and services through our connection with valued associate practices you may like to read here in due course (if using the service quote this special promotional code for 10% reduction: BL010208).
Trust you find the read of use and if we can be of assistance please do get in touch.
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