The European Union Intellectual Property Office (EUIPO) recently decided that simple emojis cannot be trademarked under European law. Here’s what happened: Background emoji In December 2021 a German company Käselow, sought to have a commonly used emoji registered as their trademark. The mark in question was an image of a hand sign commonly understood to mean ‘ILY’ or ‘I Love…
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Australia currently provides protections, via the Australian Consumer Law (ACL) and the Australian Securities and Investments Commission Act 2001 (Cth) (ASIC Act), against unfair contract terms (Unfair Contract Terms Regime). The Unfair Contract Terms Regime applies to consumer contracts and small business contracts that are considered standard form contracts.
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The metaverse is an interactive digital environment encompassing all virtual worlds, augmented reality and the internet. A space where users can interact with a computer-generated environment and other users in real time. In simple terms, a 3D version of the internet. 1. Facebook’s nod to the metaverse Following Facebook’s rebranding to Meta, privacy concerns have been raised given Facebook’s history…
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Key takeaways Recent developments of ChatGPT has triggered debate surrounding the legalities of its content. ChatGPT threatens authors and artists whose work may be used in ChatGPT content without their permission. ChatGPT also raises copyright issues for those who use ChatGPT to create content, as without a human author, it can be difficult to claim copyright infringement. ChatGPT is an…
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Each year, the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) announces its Compliance and Enforcement Priorities. In 2022-23, one of its priorities was to identify deceptive marketing practices across the digital economy. On 27 January 2023, the ACCC announced that it will be starting a sweep to identify misleading testimonials and endorsements by social media influencers. This comes as members of…
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We’ve all heard about it – personal information being leaked into the public domain or perhaps sold to third parties without knowledge or consent. Whilst these occurrences can be catastrophic, we seem to have developed a ‘breach fatigue’ or desensitization as data breaches become more of ‘the norm’. Protecting your personal information is not as simple as having a 12-character…
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