Legal News

The video-sharing platform, owned by the Chinese tech company Byte Dance, counts as one of 17 VLOPs under the landmark content moderation regulation, so it falls under tougher obligations and oversight by the Commission as a result. Bing from Microsoft and Google Search from Alphabet are likewise formally labelled as VLOPs. The Commission assigned that status in April 2023. Tik Tok must comply by 28 August 2023. Tik Tok stated that users aged 13–17 will no longer receive personalised adverts derived from their activity on or beyond Tik Tok. This update applies to users in the EEA, namely the EU alongside Iceland, Liechtenstein......

On 1 June 2023, the European Commission released a refreshed HCG to give clearer guidance to rivals seeking to collaborate, including areas not covered by the 2012 HCG. A new strand targets the telecommunications sector and examines network sharing agreements ( NSAs). This analysis outlines the core points of the update and its implications for the telecommunications industry. Types of cooperation covered by the new guidance Cooperation between competitors is central to the telecommunications industry, as operators rely on one another to secure seamless connectivity between networks and often work together to extend coverage and raise service quality. NSAs are among the most common collaboration models in mobile telecommunications. They typically entail the joint deployment and sharing of mobile network infrastructure and, at times, frequency bands between mobile network operators ( MNOs). NSAs range from simpler cooperation, such as sharing passive network...

Stoute and another v News Group Newspapers Ltd [2023] EWCA Civ 523 What are the practical implications of this case? Applications for interim injunctions in claims like misuse of private information are a familiar feature of the media and communications list. This decision sets out the statutory framework and the leading European and domestic authorities on privacy, addressing the balancing act between rights under Articles 8 and 10 of the European Convention of Human Rights when determining whether a reasonable expectation of privacy exists, with a particular emphasis on situations where photographs are taken in public following paparazzi targeting. It also explores the different thresholds for obtaining interim relief before and after publication, indicating that pre-publication orders are more readily achieved, as earlier publications may properly be treated as a relevant, albeit not conclusive, factor when evaluating the likelihood that further...

English court orders crypto exchange to transfer assets into England and Wales to facilitate enforcement of judgment ( Joseph Keen Shing Law v Persons Unknown & Huobi Global Limited) Joseph Keen Shing Law v Persons unknown and Huobi Global Limited [2023] Lexis Citation 820 What is the impact of the decision? Huobi did not agree to the order, nor did it challenge it. The court concluded that exceptional circumstances justified granting the relief: although the exchange was assisting the claimant to stop the other defendants (who had defrauded the claimant) from accessing their accounts, the position could shift to the claimant’s disadvantage, and the court would have no control over Huobi because it is based outside England and Wales. This ruling (handed down in January but only recently released) predates Piroozzadeh v Persons Unknown and others [2023] EWHC 1024 ( Ch), where the High Court set aside an...

Rancom Security Ltd v Girling and others [2023] EWHC 1115 ( Ch) What are the practical implications of this case? This judgment has two strands—a refresher on essential legal principles and a pragmatic guide for disputes practitioners, notably those pursuing civil fraud or dishonesty claims, when building a case. Conflicting evidence Beyond its survey of principle, the court offers a detailed account of how it confronts a routine but difficult problem: conflicting evidence. It sets out the framework for evaluating changing accounts, gaps in proof, defects in disclosure, and the way witness statements and the litigation process can shape witnesses' recollections. The judgment also illustrates the courts' approach to weighing credibility and drawing adverse inferences. While the findings inevitably turn on the facts, and arose within a dishonesty context, the court's treatment of these topics has broader resonance for any disputes lawyer. The sheer range of matters the judge...

The Information Commissioner’s Office ( ICO) imposed a £12.7m penalty on Tik Tok Information Technologies UK Limited and Tik Tok Inc ( Tik Tok) for violations of the UK’s General Data Protection Regulation, Retained Regulation ( EU) 2016/679 ( UK GDPR), including not handling children’s personal data lawfully. The ICO estimates in 2020 Tik Tok permitted up to 1.4m UK children under......

Soriano v Forensic News LLC and others [2023] EWCA Civ 223 What are the practical implications of this case? The English courts may grant an anti-suit injunction to restrain overseas proceedings where a party acts unreasonably. Yet they will not usually exercise that discretion where the foreign claimant is lawfully seeking documents they say they need for their claim. That holds even if the relief pursued abroad is broader than an English court would typically order. Though the dispute concerned defamation, the guidance reaches beyond that field. The Court of Appeal essentially affirmed support for legitimate evidence-gathering and is slow to conclude that recourse to foreign processes to obtain evidence is oppressive. What was the background? The appellant holds both British and Israeli nationality, has lived in the UK since 2003, and became a British citizen in 2009. He issued libel claims against a number of...

FGX v Gaunt [2023] EWHC 419 ( KB) What are the practical implications of this case? The level of damages will not astonish media law specialists, who have been resolving comparable actions in this range for many years now. A scarcity of authority exists because these disputes are typically compromised at an early juncture (a defendant being on a hiding to nothing and courting serious and severe reputational damage by letting a claimant proceed to trial) or, alternatively, potential defendants have not been chased owing to worries about recoverability. FGX is a welcome decision, likely to discourage would‑be offenders, while giving claimant solicitors a citation to leverage in settlement discussions. Even so, practitioners should remember that these claims turn on their facts. In FGX, the court applied the eggshell‑skull principle: the consequences of image‑based abuse can differ markedly between claimants. In this...

Blake and others v Fox [2022] EWHC 3542 ( KB) What are the practical implications of this case? The court stressed that, in defamation, the central question is the meaning conveyed by the words complained of; the speaker’s intention does not matter. Here, the judge drew a clear line between ‘opinion’ and ‘mere abuse’, finding that describing someone as a racist is an opinion (albeit forcefully put), whereas calling someone a paedophile is not. Whether a statement is opinion is crucial if a party seeks to invoke the defence of honestly held opinion, and it is often challenging to separate opinion from a (false) allegation. The court also underlined that truly extrinsic material cannot be relied upon to prove that a publication was, or contained, an expression of opinion. That assessment must be derived from the intrinsic material within the publication itself,...

The excitement surrounding NFTs has persisted for several years. At its simplest, an NFT is a distinct, verifiable digital asset. A purchaser of an NFT possesses a token that links to a digital file of some variety (most often an image file in practice). Although the visual component of an NFT can be duplicated and shared with ease, the holder in effect owns a digital certificate (conferred by that token) which is logged on a public blockchain (so it cannot be readily changed or altered by third parties). The associated smart contract for the NFT sets out some of the wider rights a holder might enjoy under that contractual framework. Many organisations have treated NFTs as a means to engage and communicate with their ecosystem or community. In that sense, and for certain initiatives, holding the NFT can also provide extra...

How to witness and attest a deed under the Law of Property ( Miscellaneous Provisions) Act 1989 ( Euro Securities & Finance v Barrett) Euro Securities & Finance Ltd v Barrett and others [2023] EWHC 51 ( Ch) What are the practical implications of this case? The safest route to prevent disputes over a deed’s validity is: all principal signatories execute at the same time and in the same location; any witness should be a non-party to the deed and observe the signatures physically, in person; and each witness should attest, separately, every signature they observed, doing so straightaway while remaining in the signatories’ presence. Each of these points ought to be documented in writing. That said, the judge in Euro Securities considered that the LP( MP) A 1989 may afford parties greater latitude. Although much of the discussion was obiter, in essence the judge...

Fearn v The Trustees of the Tate Gallery [2023] UKSC 4 What are the practical implications of this case? The Supreme Court has confirmed that visual intrusion can constitute a nuisance, though simple overlooking on its own does not. While eye-catching, the ruling is unlikely to trigger a deluge of neighbour disputes about being watched. The court contemplated that only a marked and sustained degree of visual interference would cross the threshold. As Leggatt LJ explained at [103], instances where land is put to an unusual use that causes visual intrusion of sufficient duration and intensity to found a nuisance claim are expected to be uncommon. It also remains the law that merely putting up a building or structure that looks over another parcel of land, without more, does not amount to a nuisance. Regarding grievances from occupants of highly glazed, tall...

These additional rules will also sit alongside the usual obligation that promotions are transparent, fair, and not misleading. As the UK government set out its plans to bring crypto activities within the existing financial services regulation, it also said it would exempt crypto businesses, which are not currently authorised in the UK, from needing their adverts to be signed off by an authorised firm. The exemptions were introduced in response to industry concerns about the lack of......

The text and data mining exception The text and data mining exception that would ease copyright rules so computational artificial intelligence ( AI) methods can analyse large volumes of information to detect patterns, trends and ‘other useful information’, often embedded in copyright works, was mooted by the UK Intellectual Property Office ( UK IPO) in June 2022. On 31 January 2023, Lopez acknowledged the IPO was ‘probably surprised...in terms of the level of concern that was expressed’ and confirmed the matter had been discussed further within the government. ‘ I am pretty confident that some of the options the IPO considered to try to create a more permissive environment for AI in this area will not......

What are the key provisions in the Bill of relevance to telecoms lawyers? Much of the law that governs the telecoms regime in the UK is derived from EU law. In broad terms, what impact would this Bill have on that existing legal framework if it is passed? The Retained EU Law ( Revocation and Reform) Bill 2022–2023 was introduced in September 2022, aiming to sweep away retained EU law automatically at the close of a sunset on 31 December 2023. That repeal would catch EU‑derived retained measures unless they are specifically kept. Consequently, any retained EU rules set out in domestic secondary legislation, as well as retained direct EU legislation, are due to lapse on 31 December 2023. In turn, for instance, elements of the Communications Act 2003 and the Wireless Telegraphy Act 2006 that, through domestic secondary...

Riley v Sivier [2022] EWHC 2891 ( KB) What are the practical implications of this case? Two notable themes arise from this careful judgment on serious harm to reputation, the public interest defence in DA 2013, s 4, and the assessment of damages. First, the court considers how evidence of poor reputation bears on serious harm. Steyn J held that ‘fresh’ allegations may still inflict serious harm even when readers already regard the claimant unfavourably. Here, the piece appeared on a site that strongly backed Jeremy Corbyn. Steyn J accepted this likely meant a sizeable share of readers were politically hostile to the claimant, who had been forthright in criticising antisemitism within the Labour Party (para [114]). Nonetheless, the new assertion that the claimant endorsed online abuse of a teenage girl would have lowered readers’ opinions of her, irrespective of...

TP ICAP Ltd v NEX Group Ltd [2022] EWHC 2700 ( Comm) The claims for breach of warranty stemmed from two probes: one by the US Commodities Futures Trading Commission concerning swaps trading linked to bond issuances and another by a Frankfurt public prosecutor targeting a named director of a group entity in relation to cum-ex trading during the relevant period. In essence, the alleged breaches concerned warranties addressing the following: that no group company, officer, or employee had been the subject of any non-routine investigation of any kind by a ‘ Governmental Authority’ within the prior 18 months; and that no circumstances existed which could reasonably be expected to result in litigation against a group company where the amount in dispute exceeds £500,000. Those warranties were, in places, qualified by a seller-awareness threshold (here defined as the actual knowledge, after...

RTL Television GMBH v Grupo Pestana SGPS SA ECLI- EU- C-2022-643 What are the practical implications of this case? This ruling clarifies the breadth of the cable retransmission right within the Sat Cab Directive and underlines the narrow situations in which broadcasters in Member States may contest the satellite distribution of television or radio programmes. Even where a retransmission of TV or radio output satisfies the technical features in Article 1(3) of Directive 93/83/ EEC (the Sat Cab Directive) and lacks the broadcasting organisation’s authorisation, the broadcaster must, before commencing proceedings, determine whether the retransmitter qualifies as an operator of a traditional cable network. If that party is not a cable operator, broadcasters cannot invoke the cable retransmission right under the Sat Cab Directive. They may, however, still rely on copyright or neighbouring rights, or on any separate cable transmission rights afforded by national...

Safarov v Azerbaijan 885/12 What are the practical implications of this case? In its ruling, the ECt HR held that where domestic courts fail to secure effective protection of intellectual property, there is a breach of human rights—specifically, the right to the peaceful enjoyment of possessions under Article 1 of Protocol No 1 to the ECHR. As to the damages claim grounded in IP rights, the outcome amounts to little more than a Pyrrhic success for the applicant, since the Court granted only a small slice of the sum he had initially sought. Nevertheless, the judgment underscores that copyright violations constitute a deprivation of property and therefore engage human rights. It foregrounds the European human rights architecture for IP and demonstrates the weight IP holds within it. The ECt HR also clarified that states must adopt appropriate steps to safeguard IP even in...

The United Kingdom General Data Protection Regulation, Retained Regulation ( EU) 2016/679, and the Freedom of Information Act 2000 ( FIA 2000) oblige public and private bodies to reply to subject access requests within one to three months when people seek details of the personal data those organisations hold about them. Yet, on 28 September 2022, the ICO announced that an investigation had found Virgin Media, the Ministry of Defence, the Home Office, the London Borough of Croydon, Kent Police, the London Borough of Hackney and the London Borough of Lambeth had 'repeatedly failed' to meet this statutory deadline. Following these conclusions, the regulator issued reprimands to all seven organisations and, under the FIA 2000, practice recommendations to two of the London boroughs. The agency added that these bodies have three to six months to make improvements or 'further...