Legally Insightful

27 October 2026 | Legally Insightful | Law, Finance & Business It has been quite a day for lawyers, regulators and anyone who enjoys keeping their money. Australia's corporate regulator has intervened in a mortgage investment fund, a major vegetable supplier has admitted price-fixing conduct, and financial markets are increasingly expecting another interest-rate rise. Meanwhile, banks are embracing artificial intelligence, a multi-billion-dollar takeover proposal has been rejected, and India's news publishers are fighting a privacy law they fear could undermine investigative journalism. There is even an AI-related natural gas megadeal. Here are seven developments reported on 26 October 2026 — and why they matter beyond the headlines. 1. ASIC intervenes in private credit: a warning about what investors aren't being told The Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC) has issued an interim stop order affecting the product disclosure statement for the M...

Jurisdiction: Australia; .au domains. Reviewed 27 October 2026. Shakespeare’s rose might smell just as sweet under another name, but a website’s domain can raise very practical branding and eligibility questions. This article concerns Australian .au domain licensing; it is separate from trade mark and business-name registration. Who does what? auDA administers the .au rules. Registrants normally deal with an accredited registrar to register, renew and manage a licence; auDA is not simply the retail registrar for every com.au name. A domain is an internet address, and licensing it does not itself grant trade mark rights. The 2021 rules are no longer a future proposal The licensing rules discussed in the original article came into effect on 12 April 2021. Australian presence is a longstanding requirement, with different eligibility and allocation rules for different namespaces. Where a registrant relies on an Australian trade mark to establish presence for com.au or net.au, the rules req...

Jurisdiction: United States; historical case commentary. Reviewed 27 October 2026. The Tiffany/Costco dispute is a useful example of the difference between overturning summary judgment and finally deciding that conduct is lawful. It concerns trade marks and alleged counterfeiting, not the loss of copyright through a generic brand name. The label at issue Costco used “Tiffany” in descriptions of rings. Tiffany challenged that use, while Costco contended that the term described a setting and raised a descriptive fair-use defence. The legal question required attention to the actual signs, consumer understanding and context. What the appeal decided On 17 August 2020, the Second Circuit vacated the judgment against Costco and remanded for further proceedings. It found factual questions suitable for trial concerning confusion, good faith and the defence. It did not conclusively hold that no reasonable jury could ever find for Tiffany, or cancel the Tiffany brand. Later development Reuters re...

Jurisdiction: United States; historical case commentary. Reviewed 27 October 2026. Leah Bassett’s case concerned artworks visible in films made at her rented home. The legal point is about the artworks and the particular uses, not a rule that a property owner automatically owns copyright in everything filmed inside a house. Separate the stages of the case The May 2020 opinion considered several claims and required more precise evidence concerning appearances of the works. A later August 2020 decision was reported as granting summary judgment on copyright liability. Liability and the amount of damages are different questions: this article does not report a verified final damages amount. Originality and useful objects US law can protect original artistic expression while treating functional features differently. Decorating an object does not automatically make all of the object’s function copyrightable. A room also may contain works by different owners. Fair use and incidental appearance...

Jurisdiction: Australia; historical case commentary. Reviewed 27 October 2026. A booking platform’s handling of data and reviews can create consumer-law issues as well as privacy questions. ACCC v HealthEngine [2020] FCA 1203 should not be reduced to a rule that a privacy policy permits every disclosed practice. Patient referrals HealthEngine admitted giving non-clinical personal information about more than 135,000 patients to private health insurance brokers between April 2014 and June 2018 without adequately disclosing that conduct. The ACCC reported more than $1.8 million earned from those arrangements. Brokers and insurers are not interchangeable descriptions of the recipients. Reviews and ratings The case also concerned the suppression and editing of patient reviews in a way that misled users. The important issue was the impression of genuine patient feedback, not a rule that every moderation decision is prohibited. Orders and practical lessons The Federal Court ordered $2.9 milli...

Jurisdiction: Australia. Reviewed 27 October 2026. A business logo can be valuable, and trade mark registration may help protect it. Here are ten practical reasons to consider registration in Australia, with the limits made clear. The title is an invitation to assess protection, not a recommendation to file without a search. 1. A searchable public record Registration records the owner, mark and goods or services. It will not appear in every possible search, and a record does not certify that a business is genuine. 2. Clearer statutory rights A registration can make the scope of a claim easier to identify. Its legal limits, earlier rights and defences still matter. 3. Support for enforcement Registration may support action against infringing use. It does not guarantee a successful demand or automatically stop every similar logo. 4. A basis for opposing conflicts An earlier mark may be relevant to a conflicting application, but rejection is not automatic and dates and legal grounds matte...

Jurisdiction: Australia; historical case commentary. Reviewed 27 October 2026. Berry v CCL Secure Pty Ltd [2020] HCA 27 concerns lost commissions following misleading conduct in a banknote-related agency arrangement. “Money fabrication” in the original headline refers to banknote manufacture, not an allegation that the claimants counterfeited money. The agreement and the misleading conduct Dr Benoy Berry and Global Secure Currency were involved in an agency arrangement concerning Nigeria. The dispute arose after misleading conduct induced termination of the arrangement. The statutory claim concerned former s52 of the Trade Practices Act 1974, with damages under s82—not s2 as the earlier article stated. The counterfactual question The damages dispute asked what would have happened without the misleading conduct, including whether the agreement would have been lawfully terminated anyway. An available lawful route is not the same as evidence that it would actually have been used. The orde...

Jurisdiction: Australia; historical case commentary. Reviewed 27 October 2026. Online reviews can raise consumer-law and defamation questions, but those are different legal regimes. A platform cannot safely treat a business-written review as a customer’s independent view merely because the customer did not object. Service Seeking In July 2020 the Federal Court ordered Service Seeking to pay $600,000 in civil penalties. Its Fast Feedback feature allowed businesses to draft reviews and star ratings, then published them if the customer did not respond within three days. The ACCC reported about 21,000 reviews created through the feature, with about 17,000 automatically published without customer input. That is not a finding that 80% of every review on the entire site was fake. Identification is not a defamation judgment Kabbabe v Google [2020] FCA 126 concerned preliminary steps to identify a prospective respondent and serve proceedings. It was not a final finding that the disputed review ...