Articles
Employees and Personal Emails – Breaching Employer Intellectual Property?
Sharon Givoni Consulting Consumer Law, Internet Law
Employers beware – employees and personal emails could be breaching your IP! One question we often get asked is: whether it is a breach of copyright for employees to email copyrighted works from a work email address to a personal email address. Employees and Personal Emails – What is the law? The leading case […]
Plain Packaging and Tobacco – We’ve Got It Covered
Sharon Givoni Consulting Consumer Law, Trade marks
Plain Packaging and Tobacco Australia’s law goes much further than the advertising bans and graphic health warnings seen in other countries when it comes to plain packaging and tobacco. Plain packaging and tobacco refer to packaging that requires the removal of branding. It bans distinctive logos and distinctive-coloured cigarette packaging in favour of drab brown packets […]
Organic Claims – Legal Requirements for Labelling and Packaging
Sharon Givoni Consulting Food Law, Intellectual Property, Packaging
As ‘Organic’ products attract a premium price it is not surprising that many businesses want to use the term on their labelling and packaging. However, when it comes to organic claims, consumers should be able to assume that the organic claim is true and that the ingredients are indeed organic. When you design a label, […]
Bad Faith Trade Mark Registration in Australia
Sharon Givoni Consulting Intellectual Property
Registering a trade mark is the most effective way to protect your brand name and other elements of your brand identity such as logos and taglines. However, caution should be taken as this protection will not be afforded to bad faith trade mark registration. Ownership of a trade mark at common law is established through the […]
Coincidental or Copy? Copyright Infringement and Music
Sharon Givoni Consulting Intellectual Property
Copyright Infringement and Music When it comes to copyright infringement and music, perhaps one of the most important questions asked is whether the alleged copy is a substantial reproduction of the original. This article considers the main principles of copyright law when it comes to songs and critques a number of important musical works. We […]
David vs Goliath: Trade mark battle with ZARA
Sharon Givoni Consulting Intellectual Property, Trade marks
ZARA vs ZARY On the 19th of April 2018, Sharon Givoni was interviewed for A Current Affair over a trade mark battle with ZARA. As you would all know, ZARA is possibly one of the largest fashion distributors in the world, selling clothing, accessories and the like. ZARA also owns several trade marks for the […]
Can You Protect Your Book Title? Copyright and Trade Mark
Sharon Givoni Consulting Intellectual Property, Protecting ideas
How to Protect Your Book Title In our law firm, we often get asked by authors whether and how they should protect their book title. Sometimes the problem is that two people in the world have the same book title for a different book. Other times authors just wish to exercise caution. In order to […]
Unfair contract terms – how could they affect you?
Sharon Givoni Consulting Consumer Law
On 2 November 2016, a new law, Treasury Legislation Amendment (Small Business and Unfair Contract Terms) Bill 2015 (Cth), came into effect. The aim was to protect small businesses from unfair terms in business-to-business standard form contracts. This law applies to standard form contracts that are either entered into, varied on or after, or renewed […]
Copyright your Craft: An event held by Craft Victoria
Sharon Givoni Consulting Copyright, Intellectual Property
On Thursday, 17 May 2018, as part of Law Week, Craft Victoria held a panel discussion to bring craft makers and legal professionals together to discuss copyright and intellectual property. The theme was copyright your craft. Our law firm attended the discussion. The purpose of this update is to share some of the useful […]
Pet Food Packaging: Legal Requirements in Australia
Sharon Givoni Consulting Intellectual Property
Starting a pet food business in Australia? Over the years we have had a number of clients come in to see us to review their pet food packaging and to make sure it is compliant with all pet food labelling regulations and standards. One of the issues that can be problematic is when people make […]