The Full Federal Court has handed a win to Hytera in its high-stakes intellectual property litigation with Motorola, allowing the Chinese radio manufacturer to file an amended defence arguing Motorola should have alerted it to the alleged theft of its source code by former employees sooner.
Plaintiffs lawyers running class actions in Victoria will be free to charge contingency fees under new legislation introduced by the Labor government this week, a move that will see a boost in class actions brought in the state and has prompted calls for the Federal Government to follow suit.
The Commonwealth Bank of Australia’s insurance division, CommInsure, has been fined $700,000 for breaching insurance hawking laws in Australia’s first post-Royal Commission criminal conviction, dodging a maximum fine of over $1.8 million through an early guilty plea and cooperation with ASIC.
The litigation funder financing the second of two recently settled shareholder class actions against Murray Goulburn will face similar scrutiny over its commission as the funder behind the first action.
Former Wallabies player Israel Folau, who was sacked over homophobic social media posts, has increased the damages he is seeking in his unfair dismissal case against Rugby Australia, calling for $14 million in compensation as “Australia’s best player”.
Motorola has urged the Full Federal Court to uphold a decision dismissing an amended defence by Chinese rival Hytera Communications that sought to blame the US tech company for not alerting it to the alleged theft of its source code sooner, saying a similar argument had already failed in an ongoing trade secrets case in the US.
Garmin has reached a settlement in a competition case brought by its former exclusive Australian distributor alleging the GPS technology giant misused its market power after the supplier refused to give up its five best customers.
The Commonwealth Bank of Australia’s insurance division, CommInsure, has pleaded guilty to 87 criminal charges that it hawked life insurance products in unsolicited telephone calls, but wants credit for the early plea.
Rio Tinto subsidiary Technological Resources has successfully challenged a decision by IP Australia to reject a patent application for a method of separating mined material, with a judge finding the claimed invention was not a collection of mere working directions as a delegate had found.
Whether judges can alter the terms of litigation funding agreements in class actions is a question that will remain unsettled for now, after litigation funder IMF Bentham chose to sidestep a lengthy, costly and risky challenge to the reach of the court’s powers.