Former vice president of the Victorian Liberal Party Marcus Bastiaan has hit Nine with a defamation lawsuit over an explosive 60 Minutes report which allegedly implied the Sydney man was a political power broker with an illegal branch stacking operation.
Herbert Smith Freehills this week escaped a cross-claim that its advice made it liable for the alleged losses of Arrium’s lenders, but the judge who tossed the claim along with the banks’ cases expressed doubts about one of the law firm’s key arguments, a warning to other firms caught up in litigation as so-called concurrent wrongdoers.
ANZ may fight to block a sacked trader from relying on his communications with ASIC in a case alleging he was fired after complaining about rate-rigging at the bank, saying it may be unlawful to use the documents, a court has heard.
US-based chemical and materials technology company Cytec Industries has won its Federal Court challenge to a mining patent application by a unit of Ecolab, with the court finding the claims in the patent lacked support and sufficient disclosure.
The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission is investigating whether new legislation is needed to address the impact of dominant digital platforms such as Google and Apple, as the regulator’s overseas counterparts usher in bills aimed at cracking down on anticompetitive behaviour.
New-Zealand dairy company a2 Milk is challenging a win for Nestle over the Swiss food and drink giant’s NAN A2 trade mark for infant formula, a mark IP Australia found was not deceptively similar to a2’s logo.
Intellectual property law firm Spicer Spicer has lost its opposition to Coca-Cola’s patent application for soft drinks and syrups containing an artificial sweetener known as Reb X, with an IP Australia delegate rejecting the firm’s argument the patent was not inventive.
Property data analytics firm CoreLogic infringed the copyright of a real estate photographer by uploading images from realestate.com.au to its own property data platform without a licence, the Full Federal Court has found.
A Gold Coast developer must re-plead allegations in a defamation lawsuit against Fairfax over an article alleging he met a former Ipswich mayor at a brothel, after a judge struck out several claims that he described as “spectacularly imaginative and utterly unreasonable”.
The banks and high-ranking executives targeted in pared-down criminal cartel proceedings over a $2.5 billion ANZ share placement are taking new steps to shut down the long-running case, including further probes into the ACCC’s conduct during its investigation into the alleged cartel.
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