Friday is widely regarded as a day marked by joy and happiness. However, last Friday did not produce such emotions for data protection officers working in the online streaming services (“OSS”) industry, that is in Amazon, Apple, DAZN, Flimmit, Netflix, SoundCloud, Spotify and Youtube. Namely, the Austrian campaign group None of Your Business (“NOYB”) filed 10 complaints with the Austrian Data Protection Authority and asked for an investigation of an alleged breach of Article 15 of the General Data Protection Regulation (“GDPR”). NOYB accused OSS for violating the “Right to access by the data subjects” (which provides that the data […]
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Dear colleagues, partners and friends, This is the most wonderful time of the year, and we wish you a marvelous holiday season! May the year 2019 be full of success and happiness! Happy Holidays!
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As recent events suggest, the harmony and tranquility (of the most wonderful time of the year) in the UK audit market, dominated by the Big Four[1], is soon to be interrupted. The UK Competition & Markets Authority (“CMA”) has published an updated paper outlining serious competition concerns and proposing legislative changes in order to improve the audit sector for the sake of both savers and investors. After conducting a market study into the statutory audit market, the CMA reached the following conclusions: Since the companies are free to choose their own auditors, there has been too much evidence of them […]
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A rainy tale of two e-mails The former Foreign Secretary and Mayor of London, Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson, also known as “Boris Johnson”, was sitting on his chair in front of his laptop on a rainy February day in 2016. He had two word files in front of him. With a scent of political mysticism, and a flash of destiny overwhelming his Etonian eyes, he had to choose which file to send to the Sunday Times, to file that will turn into an article that will grant him the key to his favorite immovable property – 10 Downing Street […]
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Bogdan Gecić, managing partner at Gecić Law, a top tier law firm from Belgrade, gave a lecture on the importance of social media and communication at the Law Firm Marketing Summit held in London. “Social media are an important tool to cement presence on the Internet and share the values of your firms with the public”, said Mr. Gecić. “We do not only embrace social media as a medium of promotion of our firm and corporate life within the office, but we also share the successes of our partners and clients because we believe in the idea, as we dubbed […]
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Not so long ago, on May 25, 2018 the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) came into force. The GDPR has been a subject of great interest and discussion, even prior to its implementation, due to its application on entities all over the world – inside or outside the European Union (EU). Although the GDPR has, practically, changed the legal framework in relation to the rules on data protection, and introduced a whole set of new obligations while imposing massive fines for non-compliance, the real implications of the application of the GDPR are yet to be seen, especially on non-EU entities. […]
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A year ago, we wrote that the use of corporate stamps during payment services was abolished. Now, this process has come to an end. Although the Corporate Act of Serbia from 2012 explicitly states that companies are not obliged to use their corporate stamps when conducting their day-to-day business operations, the practical application of this rule had not yet been enforced. Difficulties occurred primarily in dealing with the banking sector, as commercial banks continued to demand from their clients the use of corporate stamps in order to verify payment orders and other relevant documents. Such practice terminated exactly one year ago, on […]
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Recently the Ministry of Trade, Tourism and Telecommunications („Ministry“) declared a decision („Decision “) which forbids requiring within the agreements of telecommunication services the clauses under which the customers have to pay the Operator ( “Operator”) all compensations until the end of the validity of the agreement. This obligation took place even when the consumer or the Operator terminated the agreement, if the reasons that caused termination can be attributed to the customer. The Decision According to their media release, in this way the Ministry declared that it “stopped further unjust treatment” of the customers by the Operators, and inappropriate […]
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If you open the eighth edition of the Oxford Dictionary of Law and turn to page 461, poaching is defined as “taking game without permission from private land or from land on which the killing of game is restricted. Wild animals cannot usually be stolen […]”. Although the current degree of development of human rights and basic human decency forbid referring to employees as “wild animals” (at least publicly), and killing is certainly considered a criminal offence, in the corporate world of today to poach someone means to hire an employee from another, often competing, undertaking. Agreements among companies not […]
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The year 2018 is witnessing a period of constant developments and dynamics in the area of competition law in Serbia. The latest news concerns a constitutional challenge against Article 45(4) of the Competition Act of Serbia (“Competition Act”), submitted by the Commissioner for information of public importance and personal data protection (“Commissioner”). Said provision exempts information gathered for the purpose of conducting competition proceedings, which are considered as ‘protected information’ to be disclosed to the public under the Free Access to Information of Public Importance Act (“Free Access Act”). In Commissioner’s view this provision seems to be in discord with […]
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