ContractStore Legal Business Blog

ContractStore is pleased to be a founding member of APOD – The Association of Publishers of Online Legal Documents (www.apod.co.uk) which has just been established.
APOD has been created to raise awareness of the supply of online legal documents, as an affordable and reliable alternative to costly high street professional legal services. The association will also serve as an education tool for businesses as to which legal documentation is required to protect their interests, in various matters from employment to trading agreements.
Acting as a digital forum between online publishers and businesses, the website will serve as a portal of information, offering an invaluable instant contract-supply service to visitors to the site.
Founding members include major online legal document publishers such as ContractStore, Lawpack, Net Lawman and Simply-Docs.
Giles Dixon, a founder member of APOD and MD of ContractStore, says: “In tough economic trading conditions it is vital to ‘batten down the hatches’ and leave no stone unturned when protecting your business – whether this is guarding against bad debtors or making sure you are limiting your risk to claims. Properly written Terms of Business are always important, but especially so when market conditions are more difficult and customers are more likely to default on their commitments.
“However, there is still very little awareness amongst businesses of the benefits that can be achieved by buying legal documents online, and APOD has come into being for this reason.”
For more information visit www.apod.co.uk

If you want to use a photograph of someone in an advertisement, be sure to get their written consent or you could be in trouble.  The Advertising Standards Authority made this clear in a recent adjudication where an individual objected when his photo was used in an advert by a security firm without his consent. The company stated they had obtained his verbal consent but the ASA decreed that written consent must be obtained before using anyone’s image.

So, if you are going to feature individuals – maybe your own employees -in any advert or other promotional material, be sure to get their written consent.
ContractStore has a model release form that could be used for this purpose

The final stage for implementing the 2006 Companies Act occurred on 1st October.

From that date new companies no longer have to state their objects in the Memorandum, and there will be a new model form of Articles of Association.

Company forms for filing at Companies House will also change.

To summarise, the changes will cover:

For full details of the changes, go to Companies House website

Clean Coast Services (www.cleancoastservices.com) keep beaches, marinas, harbours and tidal rivers free from rubbish, cleaning up the coastline and collecting waste from land and sea.

The business began in Plymouth, but the idea had such a positive impact in the area that they soon found it expanding.

Rikkie Carette knew that getting their contracts in order was going to be critical in securing business from customers such as the government agencies and councils they now work for.

He told us: “Google searches showed lots of companies to choose from, but most legal document sites made it hard to understand what I would get for my money.

“ContractStore’s explanatory notes made it very easy to understand what I would be getting and I quickly found out that the Service Agreement was just the sort of thing I was looking for.

“The process was very easy with no problems at all and the file came in such a way that I could easy change or delete any parts I needed to suit my needs.”

“I am very pleased with the contract, it’s exactly what I was looking for and very easy to understand and amend where needed.”

With such clarity and ease of use, Clean Coast can handle their own contracts, thus avoiding heavy legal costs whilst expanding the business to major customers.

The Department for Business has produced a new guide for employers on employment law.

Here are some snippets from Tech Bytes,

Keep an eye on your intellectual property rights

From next year, possible website domain names are going to multiply wildly, as the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), the international body that oversees the structure of the Internet, plans to open up the market for domain name extensions, that is, the .com or .uk part of a web address.

The possibilities for new addresses will be almost endless. Examples include city domains such as .berlin, .paris, .london and .nyc, and themed domains such as .music, .legal or .shop.

I’ve always thought that .om domains would be great for relaxation sites, and I’ve mentally renamed several site “.con”.

This new development will also open up a field day for domain squatters, or looked at another way, an opportunity for entrepreneurs to sell valuable new domains – or more troubling for some, new variations on existing domains.

It’s potentially an additional cost for trademark owners, although with so many possibilities name owners will have to draw the line somewhere. There are rules in existence to protect copyrighted names, so there would be some protection against domain name takeover, but its also likely that users will need to pay more attention to the extensions and this adds to the information burden.

A recent survey of consumers (carried out by The Future Laboratory on behalf of domain name registrar Gandi.net) revealed that many did not yet know of the impending changes, and their reactions were not very positive. It was generally felt that this will add to confusion and difficulty in using the internet.

Business owners need to draw up a plan to acquire the extensions that will be most important, and aim to get them quickly before enterprising gold-rushers grab the names and hold them to ransom.

You might of course decide you want to take the opportunity presented to buy up some domains yourself. You may even buy an entire domain, for example, .london so that anyone wanting to use that suffix would have to come to you. But if you do, remember that there will be contests over names and undoubtedly some test cases will eventually emerge. Do you want to be one of them? If not, make sure you are protected.

Browse ContractStore’s Internet Contracts collection here.

Take a look at our Intellectual Property collection here.

Yesterday in the High Court a police officer, whose anonymous blog, Night Jack, recently won the Orwell prize for political writing,

As with most sectors, UK solicitors have an independent body overseeing their activities and ensuring they behave themselves. But in a recent poll conducted by ComRes, most people don’t know who this regulator is.

Apparently, this was interpreted as “a clear indication that the public do not feel they have a body to which they can turn in relation to legal services”.

Many thought it was the Law Society, and most who made a guess said it was the government. Are you one of the few people who knows its in fact the Solicitors Regulation Authority? The SRA commissioned the poll and are likely to be planning some marketing and brand awareness workshops as we write.

There are times when it