Communications

Recent Articles

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  21.02.2023

  Europe

  Sun­rise peri­od of the Uni­fied Pat­ent Court to be­gin 1 March

  After the final version of the UPC Rules of Procedure had been adopted and the judges of the UPC had been selected and appointed, the start of the Sunrise Period, originally planned for 1 January 2023, was postponed to 1 March 2023.Reasons for the postponement of the start of the Sunrise PeriodAccording to an "Implementation Roadmap" published on 6 October 2022, the Sunrise Period was originally to start on 1 January 2023 and the UPCA was to enter into force on 1 April 2023. However, this timeline was changed again by a communication of 5 December 2022. According to the new timeline, the Sunrise...

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  28.12.2022

  United Kingdom

  FCA out­lines plans for the in­tro­duc­tion of a reg­u­lat­ory gate­way for firms which ap­prove fin­an­cial pro­mo­tions

  Following HM Treasury’s proposal to prohibit authorised firms from approving financial promotions from unauthorised persons, unless they have successfully passed through a new “regulatory gateway” process operated by the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) (see our summary here), the FCA has now published its own consultation paper (CP 22/27) on this topic. CP 22/27 outlines the FCA’s plans to operationalise the regulatory gateway once the relevant legislation currently set out in the Financial Services and Markets Bill (see our summary here) has been made. Background Under...

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  25.11.2022

  United Kingdom

  Prob­lems with con­cur­rent leases and the Elec­tron­ic Com­mu­nic­a­tions Code

  In August this year, the Upper Tribunal published a decision which identifies a serious gap in Schedule 3A of the Communications Act 2003 (the Electronic Communications Code) (“Code”) and raises concerns for property owners, investors and developers when dealing with Code operators where there are “concurrent or intermediate leases”. These are leases that are granted to sit between, for example, the freehold and an existing lease so that the tenant under the concurrent lease becomes the landlord of the existing tenant. The effect of the Upper Tribunal’s current decision...

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  07.11.2022

  Germany

  Opin­ion of the CJEU Ad­voc­ate Gen­er­al on Art. 82 GDPR

  According to the Opinion of the CJEU Advocate General, not every infringement of the GDPR or mere annoyance or displeasure about it triggers a claim for compensation. In some cases, the data protection supervisory authorities at national and federal state level and the German courts interpret the provisions of the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) differently, so there is a great deal of legal uncertainty in data protection for companies. One particularly controversial question is whether a mere breach of the GDPR can lead to (non-material) damage or whether further effects on the data...

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  03.11.2022

  Asia-Pacific

  APAC TMC Up­date – Au­tumn 2022

  China Measures on Security Assessment of Cross-border Data Transfer take effect On 1 September 2022, the Measures on Security Assessment of Cross-border Data Transfer (Security Assessment Measures) became effective. The Security Assessment Measures provide detailed requirements for a security assessment, one of the three channel options to export personal information out of China under Article 38 of the Personal Information Protection Law (PIPL). The Security Assessment Measures prescribe who is applicable for a security assessment. Entities who meet the following requirement are required to undergo...

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  02.11.2022

  Europe

  Of­com changes its ap­proach to net neut­ral­ity: how the UK might spear­head a dif­fer­ent ap­proach in the di­git­al world

  Over the course of the last 12 months, a number of important developments in net neutrality have taken place at EU level: certain preliminary rulings resulted in the European body of telco regulator, BEREC, [1] revisiting its guidance on the matter, and in addition, European Commission officials have made it clear that they intend to consult on an initiative aimed at addressing a long-standing request from EU telecom operators to be able to charge content providers back for the cost of the capacity they use. In the UK, Ofcom has also just launched a detailed consultation on a bespoke approach...

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