ContractStore Legal Business Blog

A draft Bill has been published by the Government to amend the Construction Act. This follows a long period of consultation within the industry and comes some 12 years after the Housing Grants, Construction & Regeneration Act introduced legislation affecting construction contracts in the UK.

Many of the clauses are designed to improve conditions for specialist and subcontractors, allowing them more easily to refer payment disputes to adjudication. The draft clauses would:

• Remove the requirement for the construction contract to be in writing in order for the Act to apply.
• Allow an adjudicator to overrule a clause in a contract that imposes an unreasonable burden on one of the parties with respect to the adjudicator’s costs. (It is not unknown for a contract to deter references to adjudication by the contractor by making him bear all the costs, regardless of the outcome.)
• Prohibit terms in a contract that make an interim payment decision – e.g. by a contract administrator- binding on the parties. Thus all disputes about stage payments could be referred to adjudication.
• Revise the statutory payment framework, including allowing the contractor to give a payment notice if the payer fails to do so.
• Allow a party that exercises its statutory right to suspend performance for non-payment to recover reasonable costs and expenses incurred when exercising this right.

For more information and the full text of the Bill go to: The Construction Act Review

Or for construction contracts visit the main site.

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Over 30% of UK businesses are not using any professional help in drafting their company contracts, according to the recent ContractStore SME survey.  

We set up the survey to investigate the legal health of both Start Ups and existing British businesses.

Other findings include:-

• Approximately 1 in 5 firms have no budget for legal costs at all - of these, a third say bad debt is their greatest fear.
• 40% of companies name a possible ‘Recession’ as their ‘biggest fear, and this is followed by a fear of court proceedings – which was felt by 25% to be the primary threat to their business.
• Startups fear ‘bad debt’ more than existing business owners do – with 23% of Start Ups identifying this concern as what keeps them awake at night.
• And worryingly, over a quarter of Start Ups are not planning to get any legal support – i.e. 27%, intend to make their own contracts, and 22% haven’t set a budget for legal costs.
• Credit card fraud – came way down on the list as business concern – and for instance was mentioned by less that 3% of existing firms as their main fear.
• Significantly 21% of established businesses are not using Terms and Conditions – leaving themselves wide open to supplier and customer abuse.

We’d like to thank all the participants in the survey for helping us build this picture. If you’d like to keep up to date with future surveys or participate in one then sign up for blog updates on the right. You will then be notified when news comes through.

ContractStore.com supplies legally binding, professionally-drafted contracts for a fraction of the cost that law firms normally charge, and also offers useful free information on a variety of legal topics.

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Better patent protection for innovators seems likely in the UK after a landmark decision of the House of Lords yesterday.  The case concerned a medical patent -the Taxus stent- a simple but highly effective device to prop open the arteries of people with heart disease.  The patent had been  challenged on the grounds that the invention was too obvious to merit protection from copycats. But yesterday the law lords upheld the patent and dismissed the challenge.

 This is good news for entrepreneurs who want to patent their ideas, especially in the early days before getting funding. As one legal expert, Mark Hodgson, was quoted as saying after the case, “This gets us back to the standard that your idea is your idea.”

 The case is also good news for scientists at universities; an ever-increasing number of licences to exploit the value of inventions at universities are being issued - the latest figures, just published, show that 3,286 licences were issued in 2006-7, a more than 20 per cent increase over the previous year.

If you are buying or selling a patent, we have a contract for you:

Patent Assignment

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We’ve just released some new property contracts including shorthold tenancy agreements for furnished and unfurnished properties:

http://www.contractstore.com/shorthold-tenancy-agreement-furnished-house

http://www.contractstore.com/shorthold-tenancy-agreement-unfurnished-house

You are always welcome to comment on these or make suggestions for new contracts for the catalogue

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As the largest national marketplace in the world, the United States is attractive for many overseas businesses. However, it is always a good idea to do your homework first.

ContractStore’s US legal expert Derek Devgun has prepared a checklist to help you consider the major considerations that apply when you are thinking of doing business in the United States.

You can download ‘Doing Business in the United States - A Survey of Legal Considerations’ for free from our website:

http://www.contractstore.com/business-in-united-states

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