Our knowledge resources reflect the breadth and depth of our expertise, our insight into the issues which matter to your business, and our understanding of the markets in which you operate.
In this briefing, we focus on four areas of law and practice which have seen interesting recent changes: landlord and tenant; nuisance; real estate development; and protest. Our briefing explores some of the ways in which the real estate sector continues to be impacted by, and to respond to, challenges around energy efficiency; housing rights and safety; water management; environmental protection; and the right to protest.
Our regular round-up of recent and forthcoming developments in law and practice for in-house counsel.
Earlier this year, the European Court of Human Rights (the "ECtHR") delivered three judgments on the application of the European Convention on Human Rights ("Convention") in the climate change context. Whilst two of these cases (Agostinho[1] and Carême[2]) were ruled inadmissible on procedural grounds, in the case of KlimaSeniorinnen[3], the ECtHR found a violation of Convention rights in relation to climate change and outlined positive obligations on all State Parties to the Convention, including the UK, to mitigate climate change.
Private Equity & Financial Sponsors Partner Tom Hartwright has featured in Financier Worldwide's special report on private equity-backed M&A.
Gearing up for exit or making a strategic acquisition can be a daunting task, and it is important to be prepared. This briefing highlights the key legal due diligence issues to arise in relation to software businesses in the UK and EU, focussing on intellectual property and trading arrangement aspects.
Jeremy Elmore and Emily Clark were contributing editors to the latest edition of the International Comparative Legal Guide - Alternative Investment Funds 2024. Travers Smith also contributed two articles.
How do you know that your business owns or has the relevant rights to the intellectual property in its software, particularly where the rights are not registrable? What can your business do to manage the risk of its developed software infringing third party intellectual property rights? This briefing looks at key strategies to help manage intellectual property risks in software development.
A regular briefing for the alternative asset management industry.
Employers can expect significant reforms to UK employment law under plans announced by the new Labour government.
If open source software did not exist, firms would need to spend 3.5 times more on software, according to a 2024 Harvard Business School paper . In fact, Synopsys' 2024 Open Source Security and Risk Analysis (OSSRA) report states that 96% of codebases contain open source software. So, what is open source software?
Key employment and business immigration developments for employers.
Smart contracts have been somewhat eclipsed by the recent focus on artificial intelligence, particularly generative AI. But as we explain below, smart contracts have their uses – and it's possible that in future, generative AI could complement smart contracts to further automate the contracting process.
As technology evolves, and with burgeoning markets in artificial intelligence, software companies are not only in the position of needing to comply with GDPR themselves but are also pivotal in the design and operation of products or services that allow their customers to achieve GDPR compliance – understanding and smoothing the compliance path for customers can set a software company apart from the competition, fortifying its position within the marketplace. This article suggests key GDPR compliance strategies.
Many businesses in the scope of the UK's Energy Saving Opportunities Scheme ("ESOS") will, having submitted their ESOS notification to the Environment Agency, now have put this reporting obligation to the back of their mind until phase 4 in around three years' time. However phase 3 of ESOS brought some important changes, one of which will keep ESOS on the agenda on an at-least-annual basis for the foreseeable future.
A regular briefing for the alternative asset management industry.
The Court of Appeal has given its ruling in the Virgin Media case (see our alert). This concerned the validity of a rule amendment affecting benefits in a defined benefit contracted-out scheme which was made without obtaining the actuary's written confirmation that contracting-out requirements would still be met, as required by section 37 of the Pension Schemes Act 1993. Such confirmations were required for amendments made between 6 April 1997 and 5 April 2016. The Court of Appeal confirmed that confirmation was required for changes to future service benefits (as well as changes to past service benefits).
The Institutional Limited Partners Association ("ILPA") has relaunched its cross-industry Quarterly Reporting Standards Initiative ("QRSI") which aims to deliver the next evolution of ILPA quarterly reporting. The QRSI temporarily paused the comment period on its draft updated ILPA Reporting Template and a new draft Performance Template, which were released for comment in June this year, following the US Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit ruling to vacate the US SEC Private Fund Adviser rules ("PFAR") as the ruling shifted the rationale for the changes to the quarterly reporting standards from compliance with the SEC requirements and opened the door for an "adoption focused approach" built on industry practices with more flexibility and scope to take into account IFRS and other international standards.