NSW Health wants to amend its defence to an underpayments class action on behalf of 24,000 junior doctors, bringing claims that the lead applicant is barred from seeking compensation for group members under industrial relations law.
Pharmaceutical giants Merck Sharpe & Dohme and Pfizer have resolved a long-running intellectual property dispute over a 2015 patent owned by Pfizer for a pneumococcal vaccine.
US singer Katy Perry can withdraw an admission in a trade mark infringement case that licensing her brand to Target and Myer constituted use, with a judge finding the admission was “not consistent with current law”.
The Federal Court’s decision that artificial intelligence can be listed on a patent application as the inventor has become an outlier, as the UK joins the US in rejecting what has become an international battle to claim AI inventorship.
New requirements that funded class actions be run as managed investment schemes will throw up myriad new questions for the courts, with lawyers predicting novel challenges by defendants and group members and an altered landscape for competing class actions.
A Victoria Supreme Court judge will hear the second ever application for a group costs order in a shareholder class action against G8 Education, saying she hoped to deal with the bid in a “straightforward way”.
An ancient history academic and lawyer has filed a class action against the federal government, claiming he and other postgraduate research candidates were underpaid by major Australian universities.
The Law Council of Australia has raised concerns about the Australia Taxation Office’s draft protocol for handling claims of legal professional privilege, saying it “overreaches” and asks too much from lawyers.
A judge hearing a $2 million dispute between a former tenured professor and the University of New South Wales has lamented the lengthy pleadings filed in Fair Work cases, saying “everything but the kitchen sink seems to be thrown in, without any discrimination”.
Victoria’s environment watchdog has been taken to court over its decision to renew the licences of the state’s three remaining coal power stations, a test case under the state’s Climate Change Act and the latest in a series of climate lawsuits.