If the Premier League’s broadcast proposals extensively reported in yesterday’s press go ahead as planned, they may mark the beginning of the end for collective selling of rights – which is the glue that has kept clubs as diverse as Manchester United and Bradford City together. Ostensibly to comply with competition law, the main collective … Read more
Last week the Internet Service Provider Demon settled its long running internet defamation action with Dr Laurence Godfrey by agreeing to pay him £15,000 in damages plus costs reportedly estimated at £250,000. This was a landmark case in the UK, although there have been a number of similar cases in the US. The facts of … Read more
Jupiter Unit Trust Managers Ltd has failed to convince the High Court that an advertisement by rival Johnson Fry Asset Managers PLC, which described Jupiter as an “also ran”, was defamatory. Johnson Fry’s advertisement, under the headline “Why get your ISA from an also-ran?”, contained an illustration showing a horse race with individual horses named … Read more
New regulations on comparative advertising came into force on 23 April 2000. The Control of Misleading Advertisements (Amendment) Regulations 2000 implement an EC Directive intended to harmonise comparative advertising laws across Europe. Comparative advertising has until now been governed by a patchwork of different laws in different countries. Whilst the general aim of the Directive … Read more
The Court of Appeal yesterday put the concept of corporate privacy back on the agenda in the latest round of an important legal tussle between the BBC and the Broadcasting Standards Commission concerning secret filming by the BBC in Dixons stores. The BBC’s “Watchdog” programme carried out secret filming at Dixons stores in pursuit of … Read more
