Gilbert + Tobin

IP Australia has won its appeal of a judge’s decision to allow four Aristocrat patents for its popular Lightning Link electronic poker machine to proceed to grant, with the Full Court finding the invention merely implemented an abstract idea on a computer and was not patentable.

A judge has scolded Slater & Gordon and two Westpac subsidiaries for a “disgraceful” privilege spat in a class action over allegedly excessive superannuation fees that he said had “gone badly off the rails”.

A judge has thrown out a lawsuit that argued the funding for a class action against two Queensland energy generators didn’t comply with new regulations targeting litigation funders, and said a landmark judgment that held class action funding agreements were managed investment schemes was conceptually incoherent and ripe for a Full Court challenge.

Gadens has joined the salary hike frenzy spreading across the Australian legal market, announcing it will increase pay for all lawyers by 15 per cent.

Lawyers for JPMorgan went to the ACCC’s office to review a draft statement of the investment bank’s then managing director Jeffrey Herbert-Smith, an immunity witness for the competition regulator in its troubled criminal cartel case over an ANZ share placement, a court has heard.

A judge has declined to quash the indictment in a high-profile criminal case over a $2.5 billion ANZ share placement but sent prosecutors back to the drawing board to remedy its defects, calling the state of affairs “a complete shemozzle”.

JPMorgan’s general counsel for Australia and New Zealand was allowed to sit in on witness interviews during an ACCC cartel investigation into ANZ’s $2.5 billion share placement despite allegedly being involved in the cartel conduct, a judge has heard.

A judge has rejected part of IVF provider Virtus Health’s bid for redactions in a recent decision from the court temporarily blocking the company from purchasing rival Adora Fertility, saying some of the confidentiality claims were “staggering” and “border on ridiculous.”

BlueScope general manager Jason Ellis made executives of a steel distributor “extremely uncomfortable” in a meeting where he presented the steel giant’s price list, a court hearing the ACCC’s price-fixing case was told Monday.

Thomson Geer is giving all staff a 10 per cent pay bump, less than a week after Big Six law firm Gilbert + Tobin announced similar measures amid tight competition for talent in the legal market.