Events

CSIRO has won its bid to access samples of a wheat grain product with increased fibre, as it contemplates a possible patent infringement lawsuit against a South Australian food company.

A former director of defunct mining and exploration company Continental Coal has been sentenced to eight months’ imprisonment for failing to act in good faith in performing his directors’ duties in relation to $1 million in bridging finance.  

The High Court has agreed to weigh in on whether proportionate liability defences can be applied in the context of commercial arbitration.

A judge has approved a $5 million class action settlement against payment processor Tyro over a service outage but has shredded the proposed funder payout and legal fees that would have comprised 60 per cent of the sum, calling the costs “outrageous”. 

New Zealand honey producers have failed in a lengthy fight with their Aussie counterparts to trade mark the term ‘manuka honey’, with the Intellectual Property Office of New Zealand ruling the phrase is merely descriptive of a type of honey.

An appeals court has said that while it might be desirable for law firms to disclose their involvement in drafting expert reports, they are not legally obligated to do so, overturning a finding that Corrs Chambers Westgarth went “far beyond the permissible scope” of involvement in a report prepared for a trade secrets case.

A contradictor in two pelvic mesh class actions against Johnson & Johnson and unit Ethicon has told the court of the “extraordinary amount of group member unhappiness” following approval of a $300 million settlement – the largest in the history of Australian product liability group proceedings.

A judge has ordered contractor JKC Australia to hand over legal advice relating to a settlement deed it entered with Japanese oil company Inpex in 2021, as it seeks to hold Dutch paint company AkzoNobel NV responsible for its “significant” potential liability under the settlement.

The Australian Communications and Media Authority has found Channel Nine breached privacy rules in a story on A Current Affair about a violent dispute between neighbours in regional New South Wales that went viral on YouTube.

A judge has ordered a litigation funder that bankrolled a photographer’s unsuccessful copyright claim against CoreLogic to pay indemnity costs to the property data analytics company, saying the funder was not “motivated by any concerns for access to justice”.