Valentine’s Day isn’t just a great excuse to indulge in ruinously expensive red roses, cards and heart-shaped chocolates. It’s also a reminder that if you’re in a cohabitation arrangement, there will be financial implications – making it essential to check that your relationship’s legal aspects pass muster. 

Particularly when you start acquiring high-value assets jointly, you need a full co-ownership agreement to avoid the uncertainty and dispute that a separating couple subjected themselves to in the High Court recently. They couldn’t agree on how to end their joint ownership of a house and had to ask a court to do it for them – a stressful and costly exercise. 

You’ve poured your heart and soul into your business, building up a hard-won reputation for your brand over years, perhaps decades. 

Then up pops a new competitor, trading under a name so similar to yours that your customer base is confused into thinking either that you are the same operation, or that you are associated. If you haven’t trademarked your names and other branding, how can you protect your business from this deceptive and unlawful competition? We discuss what you’ll need to prove in the context of a recent court battle between businesses trading as “Fire Logic” and “Fire Logik” respectively.

If a dispute with your neighbour spirals out of control, and legal intervention becomes inevitable, bear in mind that our courts have signalled strongly that we should make every effort to settle our disputes privately before resorting to litigation.

A High Court’s recent criticism of all the parties to a parking dispute was that they hadn’t acted in the spirit of ubuntu, collaboratively and with concern for each other. These neighbours could have saved themselves a lot of cost, time and stress had they all acted as “reasonable neighbours”. 

Employers have a duty to protect their employees from all forms of harassment, including sexual harassment.

But what constitutes such harassment, from whose perspective must it be viewed, and how should allegations of improper conduct be assessed and dealt with? We address those questions in the context of a Labour Court case in which a bank manager was summarily dismissed for allegedly making unwelcome comments and suggestions to a female colleague. The outcome will both give heart to victims and serve as a warning to other employees and to their employers – it’s the victim’s point of view that counts!

“Trade Mark”

A trade mark is a brand name, slogan or logo that identifies your services or goods and distinguishes it from the goods and services of other businesses.

Registration gives you easily enforceable rights to use or licence the mark, and to stop others from using it (or one that is confusingly similar). Without registration, you must prove another ground for protection, such as “passing off”. Your mark can be protected forever but must be renewed every ten years. Note that trade mark rights are inherently territorial, so local registration doesn’t ensure international protection.