Archive for the 'News' Category
April 24, 2014
Readers of my blog will know that I like competition, a lot. I have also, as have many others, been following (and commenting a little) on the ongoing beer retailing regulation debate going on in Ontario, where I spend a lot of my time. While there has now been a lot written on this issue, and a significant amount of commentary, I thought that this new Sun News video sums up the key issues very well indeed (including key results of competition: price, choice and innovation) and dispels some of the myths being put forward for maintaining the current status quo and concentration in beer retailing in Ontario.
April 18, 2014
Guest post by Andrei Mincov
(Trademark Factory – reprinted with permission)
As many of you know, the Federal Government recently introduced Bill C-31, the Economic Action Plan 2014, No. 1. Among the changes to almost 40 different pieces of legislation, it introduces many significant and long-awaited changes to the Trade-marks Act.
April 16, 2014
Facebook recently announced some new changes to combat News Feed spam (see: News Feed FYI: Cleaning Up News Feed Spam). In making the announcement, Facebook said:
“The goal of News Feed is to deliver the right content to the right people at the right time so they don’t miss the stories that are important and relevant to them. Today we are announcing a series of improvements to News Feed to reduce stories that people frequently tell us are spammy and that they don’t want to see. Many of these stories are published by Pages that deliberately try and game News Feed to get more distribution than they normally would.”
Do you need contest rules/precedents
for a Canadian contest?
We offer many types of Canadian contest/sweepstakes law precedents and forms (i.e., Canadian contest/sweepstakes law precedents to run common types of contests in Canada). These include precedents for random draw contests (i.e., where winners are chosen by random draw), skill contests (e.g., essay, photo or other types of contests where entrants submit content that is judged to enter the contest or for additional entries), trip contests and more. Also available are individual Canadian contest/sweepstakes precedents, including short rules (“mini-rules”), long rules, winner releases and a Canadian contest law checklist. For more information or to order, see: Canadian Contest Law Forms/Precedents. If you would like to discuss legal advice in relation to your contest or other promotion, contact us: Contact.
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TopDog Social Media has posted a new podcast on social media contests entitled Is Your Social Media Contest Breaking the Law (and thank you TopDog for chatting with me about social media contest laws and rules). Some of the topics discussed in TopDog’s new podcast include:
The 5 most common illegal contest mistakes by businesses running contests online and over social media; Apple’s restrictions on giving away iPads & iPhones; one mistake that cost a business $170,000 in fines; two major components to ensuring your social media contest is legal; some of the basic rules you legally need to include in any contest; some of the legalities surrounding the use of third party materials; a few ways to tell if your advertising may be false or misleading; what you can and can’t legally use information for that you collect in a contest; social networks with the most and least strict policies for contests; some of YouTube’s quirky rule about using entrant information; some of what Facebook expects you to say when you run a contest; how Quebec’s strict rules could provide an opportunity for businesses; and thinking about whether your social media contest is in fact an “illegal lottery”.
April 12, 2014
I recently read remarks delivered by European Commission competition head Joaquin Almunia in Brussels on the topic of cartel enforcement (see: Fighting against cartels: A priority for the present and for the future). He discussed, among other things, recent European cartel cases, fines achieved, cartels in innovation and fast moving markets and recent detection strategies (see highlights at the bottom of this post).
April 10, 2014
The OECD has issued its second call for papers in a paper contest relating to policies including: competition, corporate governance, capital markets and financial services, international investment and foreign bribery. The OECD’s second “challenge” (its first related to competition policy) relates to the operation of stock markets, a topic being widely debated at the moment.
April 9, 2014
I work with many companies and associations in relation to their competition law compliance requirements. In this regard, a new corporate governance text, encompassing a number of compliance areas with sample codes, caught my eye earlier today entitled: International Standards: Annotated Corporate Social Responsibility Codes.
April 8, 2014
Earlier today, the Competition Bureau announced that one company and two individuals have pleaded guilty to price-fixing under the Competition Act in relation to an ocean freight cartel (see: here). According to the Bureau, these pleas relate to a price-fixing cartel for various ocean freight related surcharges (including surcharges for currency exchange rate fluctuations and fuel) in operation from 2005 to 2011, which included agreements on rates or formulas used to calculate rates for various surcharges.
Templates/precedents and checklists to run promotional contests in Canada
Templates/precedents and checklists to comply with Canadian anti-spam law (CASL)
