Who owns your employee’s invention? Lessons from the “Please Call Me” saga
24 April 2024 is ‘World Intellectual Property Day’. It’s “an opportunity to explore how intellectual property (IP) encourages and can amplify the innovative and creative solutions that are so crucial to building our common future.” (The UN’s World Intellectual Property Organization) It’s a case that has been making headlines for years, the “Please Call Me” […]
Property owners: Your rates could quadruple for unauthorised land use
“The said penalty… was imposed due to the fact that the property was being used in contradiction to its zoning” (extract from judgment below) Municipalities all have the right (and the duty) to regulate land use in their areas, and amongst other sanctions, properties that are used unlawfully or without authorisation can be subjected […]
Directors at War: Terminating Email Access
“All is fair in love and war…and business is war.” (Jasmine Kundra) When company directors are locked in dispute, one of them may be tempted to cut off the other’s access to emails and to the business server – a tactic likely to have immediate and serious consequences for the director thus cut off. Its […]
Exemption Clauses in Contracts – Fine Print Can Void Them
“… he did not think that he was binding himself ‘to all sorts of fine print that I can’t even read’.” (Extract from judgment below, describing evidence given by the customer during the trial) For suppliers of goods or services, incorporating a strong, clearly worded exemption clause (a clause excluding or restricting your liability to […]
Buying a Property: Check the Seller’s Marital Status!
If you are taking advantage of our current low interest rates and reduced selling prices to buy a property, make sure that you establish the seller’s marital status with something more than what the seller tells you. Your risk comes in if the seller is married in community of property. That’s because, whilst our law […]
Options to Renew Leases – Risks for Landlords and Tenants
Leases often give tenants an option to extend or renew at the end of the current term, and tenants who lose sight of the value and importance of such an option are flirting with disaster. Tenants In a nutshell, when the time comes to exercise your option do comply fully with the clause’s requirements. Make […]