The Marriott Hotel chain announced on Friday 30 November 2018 that information contained in its Starwood brands guest reservation database was compromised. Unauthorised access occurred in connection with reservations at Starwood properties on or before 10 September 2018, potentially dating back to 2014. Marriott received an alert from a security tool on 8 September 2018 […]

The 2018 Budget has been received positively by business groups. Carolyn Fairburn, CBI Director-General said it was “a rock solid Budget, bringing more treats than tricks for business whilst the Federation of Small Businesses hailed it as “the most small-business-friendly budget that this Chancellor has delivered.” So what could the Budget mean for your business? […]

Labour peer and long-standing human rights campaigner Lord Hain blasted through five Non-Disclosure Agreements (NDAs) when he named retail tycoon Sir Philip Green as the latest leading businessman at the centre of allegations of workplace abuse, including sexual and racial harassment, on 26 October. Lord Hain’s actions are all the more dramatic as just two […]

It’s fair to say that the bigger the brand, the more valuable it is; so it is no surprise that businesses will try their best to protect their brand even when, in hindsight, it may not have been the most commercially sound decision. A perfect example of this is the recently reported case involving rap […]

Last weekend news broke of a data breach at the Conservative Party conference via an app, prompting predictions of an embarrassing GDPR fine for the party currently in power. The limelight for this data breach was wholly stolen by Facebook who revealed news of the largest ever data breach in the history of its company […]

Whilst the most common way to register a trade mark is using a word or logo “mark”, there are other options available if your business uses something that is sufficiently distinctive enough, for example a colour, a smell or a shape. The common hurdles for registering a trade mark that must be overcome include: the […]

The UK government are set to announce a consultation on ‘no-fault divorce’ as Justice Secretary David Gauke described the current system as creating “unnecessary antagonism” following the case of Owens v Owens. It was reported that David Gauke now plans to call for the existing fault-based system to be overhauled. We reported on the case […]

Love them or hate them, Crocs have become synonymous with summer months, gardening and splashing about in the surf.  But did you know that they recently lost their patent protection in the EU?  This means that you can expect to see the shops flooded with copycat designs and variations. Whilst the process of registering a […]

The Information Commissioner’s Office (“ICO”) has announced that Facebook is to be fined £500,000 for its part in the Cambridge Analytica scandal. The ICO concluded that Facebook failed to safeguard its users’ information and be transparent about how such data was harvested by others. The Information Commissioner Elizabeth Denham said: “Facebook has failed to provide the kind […]

The world was a different place in 1988.  The Soviet Union was still in existence, the Berlin Wall hadn’t yet fallen, the only Star Wars being discussed was President Regan’s anti‑missile shield and the internet was still a twinkle in Tim Bernard-Lee’s eye.  It was also the year that the Copyright, Designs and Patent Act […]