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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

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

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

Sickness Benefits Act Based on article 29a of the Sickness Benefits Act the female insured who is not able to perform work is entitled to receive a payment if the cause of the disability to work is related to pregnancy or giving birth. In the past, a connection between psychological complaints, causing the disability to

For the first time in the Netherlands someone has received a passport without a gender designation. Ms. Zeegers does not feel like a man and does not feel like a woman. Earlier this year, the court of Limburg decided that gender is not a matter of sexual characteristics but of gender identity. Therefore, Ms. Zeegers

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 2019. In the coming period the minister is going to work

The General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) has already been in force for several months. However, there is still uncertainty about the meaning of certain terms in the GDPR. For example, it is not clear to everyone what the difference is between a controller and a processor, while these are core concepts of the GDPR. According

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.

Dutch Trust Office Supervision Act According to the Dutch Trust Office Supervision Act, the following service is regarded as a trust service: the provision of domicile for a legal entity or company in combination with the provision of additional services. These additional services can, among other things, consist of providing legal advice, taking care of

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

The European Network of Councils for the Judiciary The European Network of Councils for the Judiciary (ENCJ) has suspended Poland as member. The ENCJ states to have doubts about the independence of the Polish judicial authority based on the recent reforms. The Polish governing party Law and Justice (PiS) has introduced some radical reforms in

Amsterdam Court of Appeal Then it is wise to request proper advice about the duties in relation to the works council of your company. By doing so, you can avoid a potential hindrance to the selling process. In a recent ruling of the Amsterdam Court of Appeal, the Enterprise Division ruled that the selling legal

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 of telephone calls and telegraph communication is inviolable.

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

Everyone needs to keep the Netherlands digitally safe says Cybersecuritybeeld Nederland 2017. It is very hard to imagine our life without Internet. It makes our life easy, but on the other hand, carries a lot of risks. The technologies are developing rapidly and the cybercrime-rate is rising. Cybersecuritybeeld Dijkhoff (Deputy State Secretary of the Nederlands)

Dutch person Many Dutchmen probably dream about it: getting married at a beautiful location abroad, maybe even at your beloved, annual holiday destination in Greece or Spain. However, when you – as a Dutch person – wish to get married abroad, you must meet a lot of formalities and requirements and think about a lot

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

Age of the employee In the Netherlands the minimum wage depends on the age of the employee. The legal rules on the minimum wage can differ annually. For example, from July 1, 2017  the minimum wage now amounts to € 1.565,40 per month for employees of 22 and over. 2017-05-30

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

#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

Have you ever booked your holiday online? Then chances are high that you have encountered offers which come across much more attractive than they ultimately prove to be, with a lot of frustration as a result. A screening of the European Commission and the EU consumer protection authorities has even shown that two thirds of

Dutch bill In a new Dutch bill which has been placed on the internet for consultation today, the Dutch minister Blok (Safety and Justice) has expressed the wish to end the anonymity of holders of bearer shares. It will soon be possible to identify these shareholders on the basis of their securities account. The shares

Drones Nowadays, it is almost impossible to imagine a world without drones. As a result of this development, the Netherlands could for instance already enjoy impressive drone footage of the dilapidated pool ‘Tropicana’ and elections have even been held to decide on the best drone movie. As drones are not only fun, but can also

Concert tickets for promotional purposes Almost all Dutch radio stations are known to regularly give away concert tickets for promotional purposes. Yet, this is not always lawful. The Dutch Commissariat for the Media has recently given NPO Radio 2 and 3FM a rap over the knuckles. The reason? A public broadcaster is characterized by independence.

Imagine this You come across an offer on the internet that appears too good to be true. Due to a typo, that beautiful laptop carries a price tag of 150 euros instead of 1500 euros. You quickly decide to benefit from this deal and decide to purchase the laptop. Can the store then still cancel

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