Employment Law

Showing Restraint: Non-Competition Law and Former Employees
When a valued employee leaves, it can be a difficult time for a business. As if to rub salt in the wound, sometimes the same employee surfaces in a rival organisation or starts a business in direct competition. Are you prepared

What every business should know about common law employment contracts
The signal to noise ratio in Australian employment law is currently poor. This article overviews requirements for common law contracts and our three packages for this type of contract for employees. So far in September 2007 this is our most popular article. The topic may not be fun, but it's vital!

Dazzle the competition with records
There are increased mandatory legal requirements for written records, consents and notices under Australian employment law. Virtually no company or management team can rely on employment law templates and record keeping practices which pre-date the Workplaces Relations Act 1996 (Cth) as amended by Work Choices.

Remove fuss and fuzz from employment leave entitlements
This article asks and answers six questions about "leave entitlements". Leave entitlements raise employment law issues in a compliance audit, business restructuring, retrenchment or employee termination.

Brands, Strategy and Business Models

Brand destruction writ large
In our firm we use the term "brand destruction" to describe avoidable business brand blunders. Rarely do we come across brand destruction as clear as a July 2007 letter from Angus & Robertson bookshops (A&R) to its book suppliers who A&R says provide "unacceptable profitability". This was our most popular post in August 2007.

Integrated, differentiated and creative brand strategy
We discuss the Microsoft, Fosters and Coopers brands to distinguish integrated, differentiated and creative marketing strategy. Strategy should guide the selection of which brands to register as trade marks to gain a legal monopoly.

Trade mark law strategy kept simple for blondes
Fosters recently changed one of its beer brands from "Carlton Pure Blonde" to just "Pure Blonde". What was Fosters' trade mark law strategy or legal battle plan for the shift?

Business productivity with new media: 10 questions
Want to improve productivity, grow your business or review your strategy? Here are 10 short questions which tumble out of our recent work as lawyers and consultants.

10 conversations about business models
Listed in this post are 10 topics we would happily discuss with you on the phone free-of-charge. We're proposing an open conversation to exchange thoughts, play cards and see where that might lead.

Intellectual Property

Report finds 5.6 million reasons for doing a patent search
A report by the UN body, the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO), provides some indication of the level of innovation and invention by patent applicants resident in Australia. It ranks Australia. A tidbit is that the leading country from which patents are filed worldwide is Japan (not the US). The post ends with three practical hints for innovation commercialisation.

UK organisational views and statistics on intellectual property
What IP issues concern businesses? How much of the music downloads revenue pie goes to creators? How is IP law central to Johnson & Johnson? Read on for answers provided by statistical analysis of the December 2006 Gower Review of Intellectual Property. These are all signs of the business use of IP law.

Security

"On the Internet nobody knows you're a dog"
This was the caption of Peter Steiner's brilliant cartoon in the New Yorker in 1993. Roughly speaking that was the first year of the commercialisation of the Internet. Fourteen years later, the caption resonates with reports on risks faced by Internet users. This one looks at Facebook. It's not a "shock, horror" beat up.

Communications

Retail services revenues of Australia's major telcos
The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) released in August 2007 the latest in its annual series of publications on major telco revenues in Australia, Telecommunications Market Indicators Report 2005-2006.

Four billion subscribers
Whether we like it or not, all businesses have to respond better to the challenge of mobile phones. They affect in some way the business models, business operations, and value chains of every business. There are globally now 2.68 billion mobile phone accounts. Hello!