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Dutch Law on the protection of trade secrets

Entrepreneurs that employ employees, often share confidential information with these employees. This may concern technical information, such as a recipe or algorithm, or non-technical information, such as customer bases, marketing strategies or business plans. However, what will happen to this information when your employee starts working at the company of the competitor? Can you protect

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Consumer protection and general terms and conditions

Entrepreneurs who sell products or provide services often use general terms and conditions to regulate the relationship with the recipient of the product or service. When the recipient is a consumer, he enjoys consumer protection. Consumer protection is created to protect the ‘weak’ consumer against the ‘strong’ entrepreneur. In order to determine whether a recipient

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Many people sign a contract without understanding the contents

Sign a contract without actually understanding its contents Research shows that many people sign a contract without actually understanding its contents. In most cases this concerns rent or purchase contracts, employment contracts and termination contracts. The reason for not understanding contracts can often be found in the use of language; contracts often contain many legal

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Divide pension when divorces

Government wants to automatically divide pension when it comes to divorces. The Dutch government wants to arrange that partners who are getting a divorce automatically get the right to receive half of each other’s pension. Dutch minister Wouter Koolmees of Social Affairs and Employment wants to discuss a proposal in the Second Chamber in mid

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Unfair commercial practices via telephone increase

Dutch Authority for Consumers and Markets Unfair commercial practices through telephone sales are reported more often. This is the conclusion of the Dutch Authority for Consumers and Markets, the independent supervisor that stands up for consumers and businesses. People are approached more and more by telephone with so-called offers for discount campaigns, holidays and contests.

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Copyright: when is content public?

Intellectual property law is constantly developing and has tremendously grown recently. This can be seen, amongst others, in copyright law. Nowadays, almost everyone is on Facebook, Twitter or Instagram or has his own website. People therefore create much more content than they used to do, which is often published publicly. Moreover, copyright infringements take place

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Deliverer not an employee

‘Deliveroo bicycle courier Sytse Ferwanda (20) is an independent entrepreneur and not an employee’ was the judgement of the court in Amsterdam. The contract that was concluded between a deliverer and Deliveroo does not count as an employment contract – and thus is the deliverer not an employee at the delivery company. According to the

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Amending the Dutch constitution

Privacy sensitive telecommunication better protected in the future On July 12, 2017, the Dutch Senate unanimously accorded the proposal of Minister of the Interior and Kingdom Relations Plasterk to, in the near future, better protect the privacy of email and other privacy sensitive telecommunication. Article 13 paragraph 2 of the Dutch Constitution states that secrecy

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Rotterdam harbor and TNT victim of world hacker attack

On June 27, 2017, international companies had IT malfunctioning due to a ransomware attack. In the Netherlands, APM (the largest Rotterdam container transfer company), TNT and pharmaceuticals manufacturer MSD reported failure of their IT system due to the virus called “Petya”. The computer virus began in Ukraine where it affected banks, companies and Ukraine’s electricity

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European Commission wants intermediaries to inform…

European Commission wants intermediaries to inform them about constructions for tax avoidance they create for their clients. Countries often lose tax revenue due to mostly transnational fiscal constructions that tax advisors, accountants, banks and lawyers (intermediaries) create for their clients. To increase transparency and enable cashing of those taxes by the tax authorities, the European

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Taxes: past and present

The history of tax begins in Roman times. People living in the territory of the Roman Empire had to pay taxes. The first tax rules in the Netherlands appear in 1805. The basic principle of taxation was born: income. Income tax was formalized in 1904. VAT, income tax, payroll tax, corporation tax, environmental tax –

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On July 1, 2017, in the Netherlands the labour law changes…

On July 1, 2017, in the Netherlands the labour law changes. And with that the conditions for health, safety and prevention. Working conditions form an important factor in the employment relationship. Employers and employees can therefore benefit from clear agreements. At this moment there is a huge diversity of contracts between the health and safety

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Legal procedures are intended to find a solution to a problem…

Legal problems Legal procedures are intended to find a solution to a problem, but often achieve the complete opposite. According to a research from Dutch research institute HiiL, legal problems are being resolved less and less, as the traditional process model (the so-called tournament model) instead causes a division between parties. As a result, the

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Nowadays, the hashtag is not only popular on Twitter and Instagram…

#getthanked Nowadays, the hashtag is not only popular on Twitter and Instagram: the hashtag is increasingly used to establish a trademark. In 2016, the number of trademarks with a hashtag in front of it increased by 64% worldwide. A good example of this is T-mobile’s trademark ‘#getthanked’. Still, claiming a hashtag as trademark is not

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Eindhoven is amongst others known for its airport ‘Eindhoven airport’…

Eindhoven is amongst others known for its airport ‘Eindhoven airport’. Those who choose to live close to Eindhoven Airport will have to take account of the possible nuisance of overflying aircrafts. However, one local Dutch resident found that this nuisance had become too serious and demanded compensation of loss. The Dutch court of East Brabant

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Many people often forget to think about the possible consequences…

Privacy on social networks Many people often forget to think about the possible consequences when posting certain content on Facebook. Whether intentional or extremely naïve, this case was certainly far from clever: a 23-year-old Dutchman recently received a legal injunction, as he had decided to show free movies (amongst which movies playing in theaters) on

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