<p>Filter Knowledge</p>

REACH update: Advocate General’s opinion on the application of the 0.1% threshold for substances in articles

As first reported in our legal briefing 'Mandatory Carbon Reporting' of July 2012, there is an increasing trend by legislators at both UK and EU level towards compulsory corporate reporting and disclosure on Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) matters.

In a rising market, buyers are exposed to the risk of spending time and money investigating a property only to find that the seller decides to proceed with another party. Sellers want to maximise a rise in property prices and make full use of their agents' marketing efforts by selling quickly to the highest bidder rather than wasting time with slow or indecisive potential buyers.

In practical terms, businesses do not normally create IP – individuals do, such as employees or consultants. But it is crucial for businesses either to own or to have the right to use that IP.

Does the term "good faith" mean anything when used in a contract governed by English law? And, if so, what effect is a "good faith" obligation likely to have in practice?

Document execution sounds like a dry topic, but last-minute problems with execution can derail the most carefully-negotiated and documented transactions. In this increasingly digital age, the validity of electronic signatures is top of our list of FAQs, but more traditional questions as to the manner of execution never seem to go away.

One of your employees has left to work for a competitor. You suspect that they have taken a copy of your customer database with them.

With both the public and private sectors looking to cut costs and "do more with less", outsourcing is often seen as a solution. This briefing highlights how customers of outsourcing providers can avoid some of the major pitfalls.

It's easily done: following months of negotiations, a draft contract is ready for signature but other things take priority, work begins and the contract never gets signed. Six months later, a dispute arises – but, as the draft hasn't been signed, it isn't binding.

Possibly to the embarrassment of the Home Office, the Abu Qatada deportation case provides a useful reminder of the ambiguities inherent in many commonly-used expressions of time in legal documents.

On 1 June 2007, after years of hard fought political lobbying, the EU's Regulation on the Registration, Evaluation and Authorisation and Restriction of Chemicals (REACH) finally came into force. Viewed by many as the most complex piece of EU legislation to date, REACH changes how chemicals will be made, imported and used within the EU.

The UK Bribery Act will have a significant impact on many foreign companies when it comes into force in July 2011 because of its extra-territorial reach. A foreign company which carries on any "part of a business" in the UK could be prosecuted under the Bribery Act for failing to prevent bribery committed by any of its employees, agents or other representatives, even if the bribery takes place outside the UK and involves non-UK persons.