In all the heated debate in the UK about “Brexit” and the upcoming referendum, one aspect of EU regulation that is of crucial importance to the maritime industries has rather gone under the radar. This is the so-called EU Port Services Regulation or “PSR” which seeks to improve the efficiency and competitiveness of the EU port sector by, inter alia, increasing financial transparency in the ports sector both in terms of public funding that ports may receive and their charges t

The recent Commercial Court judgment in the case of Alan Ramsay Sales & Marketing Ltd v Typhoo Tea Limited, reported on 8 March 2016, highlights the importance of having a clear written agreement setting out the terms of the agency and, in particular, the manner in which it may be terminated. The judgment is interesting for a number of reasons, not least in that it considers in some detail two areas of the law that are often troublesome for lawyers and claimants alike, namel

On 9 March 2016 the UK’s Supreme Court gave judgment in the long-running dispute between Magmatic Limited (“Magmatic”), the makers of the children’s ride-on suitcase known as a ‘Trunki’, and, PMS International Group Plc (“PMS”) the manufacturers of a rival product, the ‘Kiddee’. The judgment is a significant one, and is expected to have wider long-term implications in the sphere of intellectual property rights, specifically, protection of intellectual property rights afforded

Seafarers, airline pilots, international management consultants, salesmen, and the like often perform their duties in multiple locations, working outside of their “normal” work base, or sometimes without an easily discernible “normal” base. Such peripatetic workers can sometimes become the object of legal-head scratching in circumstances where their entitlement, or otherwise, to certain statutory rights comes into question, and the spotlight fell recently on the UK’s pension

“Wild Spirit, which art moving everywhere; Destroyer and preserver;” Ode to the West Wind – Percy Bysshe Shelley As an island facing the Atlantic squalls, the UK is particularly blessed in terms of its wind resource as we have all experienced here during this last winter! According to RenewableUK, the UK has been the world leader in the offshore wind industry for the last eight years, with as much capacity already installed off the UK shores as the rest of the world combined.

The recent Supreme Court judgment in the case of Mohamud v WM Morrison Supermarkets PLC, handed down on 2 March 2016, is of interest to employers, particularly those (such as crew employers) who employ people who will interface with members of the public. The case concerns an employee of the respondent supermarket, who launched a serious physical assault on the claimant following a verbal altercation over a trivial request. The motivation for the assault appears to have bee