Graphene patent wars heat up

If the number of patents for a new technology is anything to go by, graphene is one of the hottest nanotech developments to emerge so far. There were over 7,350 patents on the carbon-based material by the end of December 2012, with 18 per cent of those filed in the previous 12 months, according to a study by the technology strategy company Cambridge IP.

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Lance Armstrong’s Oprah confession may not lead to widespread legal action

During his much-hyped interview with Oprah Winfrey, disgraced cyclist Lance Armstrong described the moment that his key sponsor, Nike, ditched him as ‘a $75m day’. Recognising that he could no longer rely on the income from a variety of generous sponsors, he looked towards a more uncertain and less secure future. Yet following his confession of systematic doping, could a long list of potential law suits lead to his financial liabilities extending much further?

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The ironies of Iraq’s ‘Camp Liberty’

31 March 2013 is the self-imposed deadline for a group of displaced Iranian dissidents in Iraq to have their status as refugees determined by the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), and to have found permanent places of settlement – safe from the harassment of both the Iranian government and the Iraqi security forces.

From their exile in the late 1980s until the spring of 2012, this group, some 2,500 or so members of an organisation called the Mujahedin e-Khalq (MEK), had inhabited the settlement of Camp Ashraf, some 60km north of Baghdad, to where they had fled from persecution by the Khomeini regime.

The MEK, which has its origins in what has been described as ‘Islamo-Marxism’, had fought against the Shah of Iran, but soon fell foul of the Ayatollah Khomeini after the 1979 Iranian Revolution, with some analysts estimating that up to 30,000 were killed by the Iranian regime in 1988 alone.

Its prospects were further hampered by inclusion on both the European Union and United States terrorist lists (groups subject to asset freezes and other restrictions) in addition to being regarded as a terrorist organisation by the Iranian regime.

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Targets would improve social mobility in legal profession, says Law Society President

Rocketing tuition fees have created an urgent need to improve social mobility in the legal profession, according to the President of the Law Society of England and Wales.

The bigger City firms should set targets for all diversity characteristics, Lucy Scott-Moncrieff tells IBA Global Insight, including for women, black and minority ethnic groups and disabled employees. Yet social mobility should be a particular priority due to the ‘dire fees situation’, she stresses.

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Barroso’s euro optimism questioned, as UK Prime Minister promises in/out EU referendum

The start of 2013 may not have seen the same degree of fatalism surrounding the cohesion of the European Union (EU) and eurozone as January 2012, but the recent announcement by the EU President José Manuel Barroso that the existential crisis affecting the euro is over has raised eyebrows across Europe.

The prospect of a return to stability is universally hoped for– and the euro has increased in strength over recent months – but despite an apparent renewed appetite for sovereign bonds from some peripheral eurozone countries the economic outlook across the EU remains very difficult according to those on the ground

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Wegelin closure signals sea change for Swiss banks

Switzerland’s oldest bank is to close after pleading guilty in a New York court to helping American citizens avoid taxes.

Wegelin, founded in 1741, said it would ‘cease to operate as a bank’ after admitting that it had helped about 100 American clients avoid paying taxes on assets worth at least $1.2bn between 2002 and 2010. The bank has agreed to pay $57.8m in fines and restitution to the US authorities.

Wegelin’s guilty plea included a claim that put Switzerland’s financial industry on high alert. Otto Bruderer, a Wegelin managing partner, said in court papers that the bank believed it would not be prosecuted for its conduct because it had no presence in the US and ‘because of its understanding that it acted in accordance with, and not in violation of, Swiss law and that such conduct was common in the Swiss banking industry.’

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Lack of women at the top is an ‘uncomfortable truth’ for the legal profession, says Law Society President

Following a recent survey of leading lawyers, commissioned by the Law Society, its President Lucy Scott-Moncrieff has spoken out on the lack of women at the top of the legal profession; despite burgeoning numbers of women entering the profession, very few women are appointed partners and even fewer make it into the boardroom.

‘Unwittingly, [some] firms may be losing talented women and promoting mediocre men,’ says Scott-Moncrieff. ‘If career progression was based on pure merit, some male business leaders and law firm senior partners would never even have seen the paintings on the boardroom wall. This is disappointing for the talented women who lose out, but is also damaging to the organisations, which lose what they have to offer.’

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Chávez inauguration absence causes constitutional uncertainty

Following his winning bid for re-election in October 2012 – beating nearest rival Henrique Capriles by a nine per cent margin – Venezuela waited with bated breath to see its President, Hugo Chávez, sworn in for another six-year term last Thursday.

However, on 10 January 2013, or ‘10E’, as it has often been referred to by the press and on social networking sites, Chávez was nowhere to be found in Venezuela. Instead he was reportedly still in Cuba, recovering from complications following a fourth cancer operation which took place on 11 December 2012.

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Magic circle firms draw up first human rights policies

Three magic circle law firms may soon become the first legal practices in the world to draw up their own human rights policies, IBA Global Insight has learnt.

Clifford Chance, Linklaters and Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer are in the process of formulating human rights strategies to comply with the Guiding Principles for Businesses and Human Rights (‘Guiding Principles’), crafted by the former UN Secretary-General’s Special Representative for Business and Human Rights, John Ruggie.

Other firms, including Allen & Overy, are understood to be in the early stages of discussions over how to formalise their human rights compliance.

The Guiding Principles were endorsed by the UN Human Rights Council in June 2011, and hundreds of companies have since used them as a benchmark for their CSR policies. Yet not a single law firm in the world is currently believed to have a human rights policy of its own. Even Foley Hoag, where Ruggie acts as a senior advisor, comes up empty-handed.

Indeed, only a small group of firms – including Freshfields and Clifford Chance – has signed up to the UN Global Compact, which lists a series of human rights commitments for businesses.

Clifford Chance partner Rae Lindsay concedes that law firms need to do more. ‘The larger corporations have been quite advanced on this and law firms have possibly lagged a little behind. I think they just don’t recognise they are part and parcel of the equation.’ Read more

Security Council must sanction Libya over al-Senussi trial, says top barrister

A leading human rights lawyer has demanded that the UN Security Council imposes sanctions on Libya if the country fails to hand over a senior official of the Gaddafi regime to the International Criminal Court.

Libya is in ‘flagrant violation’ of international law by refusing to relinquish custody of former intelligence chief Abdullah al-Senussi to The Hague, Ben Emmerson QC has claimed. Libya has announced it intends to try al-Senussi within a month, and is likely to impose the death penalty.

Al-Senussi was one of the closest confidants of Libya’s former leader Colonel Muammar Gaddafi. He is wanted by the ICC, along with Gaddafi’s son Saif al-Islam, for two counts of crimes against humanity – murder and persecution – alleged to have been committed against protesters at the start of the Libyan uprising in February 2011.

Emmerson, counsel to al-Senussi, issued an emergency application to the ICC’s Pre-Trial Chamber on 9 January urging the judges to order the Libyans to comply with their legal obligations. He has also written to the president of the Security Council, Masood Khan of Pakistan, and British Foreign Secretary William Hague to ask them to use their influence to put pressure on the Libyans.

The former spy-chief fled to Mauritania in March 2012 and Emmerson is particularly interested in evidence of a deal struck by Libya for al-Senussi’s return. Emmerson has requested from the UK foreign secretary ‘any information in [the UK’s] possession’ concerning the rendition arrangements between Libya and Mauritania in September 2012, including whether UK officials took part in any questioning. Read more