Setting up a new company is on a superficial level, quick and easy. However, there are intricacies to the incorporation process of which to be aware. When setting up a company many people simply tick the yes box when asked “do you need a Constitution”. However after the company is incorporated, ..
Read MoreThere is a common, and potentially very costly, misconception that changing a copyright protected work by 10% (or any other percentage for that matter) or only reproducing a smaller proportion of a protected work will mean that one can avoid liability for copyright infringement. This
Read MoreThe recent action taken by Australia’s consumer watchdog, the ACCC, against Europcar is a reminder for all business owners to ensure they are not charging “unreasonable” credit card surcharges. The Australian Competition & Consumer Commission (ACCC) has started proceedings in the Federal..
Read MoreThe Court decided that a worker who was supplied through a labour hire company as a casual truck driver to a mine in Queensland was not in fact a casual employee under the Fair Work Act. As a result, the employee was held to be a permanent full-time employee entitled to annual leave and a payment in lieu of notice when his employment ended.
Read MoreOwners of private and local government buildings in the Mackay region must meet new state-wide obligations to undertake a mandatory three stage process to identify if a building has ‘combustible cladding’.
Read MoreA common misconception is that a trade mark is the same thing as a business name, company name or domain name. It’s not. Business, company and domain names, and trademarks are four distinct identifiers that serve different purposes in the marketplace and registration of them accords mar..
Read MoreIncreasingly, we are having to fix problems with trust deeds that come across our desk, due to a range of issues. Whilst these problems may not immediately jump out at you, they rear their heads when changes are made, and especially if the Deed needs to be registered with the Titles Office. ..
Read MoreDo you have a well drafted Force Majeure clause in your contracts? If not, then you are taking a massive risk… ‘Force Majeure’ is French, meaning “superior force”. In a Contract, such a clause allows a party to suspend or terminate performance of their obligations when certain ci..
Read MoreA New South Wales security of payment case could be an indicator of how Queensland security of payments legislation may be interpreted by the Queensland courts. For a payment claim to be valid there must be a reference date… The High Court, in its first decision dealing with..
Read MoreLegislation relating to unfair contract terms for small businesses has, to date, generally been untested. However, a recent case against waste management solutions company, JJ Richards and Sons, shows these laws have real ‘teeth’, with eight terms of a contract being deemed unfair and unenforcea..
Read MoreLocal companies have literally lost millions of dollars of equipment overnight in the collapse of Caledon’s Cook Colliery mine. This is a scary reminder of the importance of correctly registering on the Personal Property Securities Register. It is a cut throat system and ownership means no..
Read MoreThe region’s METS sector is known for its great innovation to improve productivity and sustainability. In fact, many local businesses have registered patents to protect their ideas. The Australian Patent Office is currently receiving 30,000 standard patent applications each year. There h..
Read MoreOver the years, many clients have admitted that they have never read their terms and conditions (often buried somewhere on their website) or have “borrowed” them from a website or from a competing business. This is disastrous, especially when it comes time to rely upon those terms to recov..
Read MoreFour men. One vision. To be the leading diversified mining service provider and viewed as the employer of choice in the sector. PIMS Group is a proud, locally owned Mackay company taking on the big names in the highly competitive mining services space. Manager Director of PIMS Gr..
Read MoreOver the years, many clients have admitted that they have never read their terms and conditions (often buried somewhere on their website) or have “borrowed” them from a website or from a competing business. This is disastrous, especially when it comes time to rely upon those terms to recov..
Read MoreDid you know that what you see through searching on Google or Yahoo is only about 4% of the content on the world wide web? The other 96% exists in the ‘invisible web’ or the ‘deep web’. The deep web are parts of the world wide web where the content is not indexed, so not picked up by standa..
Read MoreRecently, the Queensland Parliament (Labor with the help of the Katter Party) passed the proposed industrial manslaughter amendments into law. The amendments broaden responsibility for workplace related deaths and substantially increases the potential penalty. The new offence of industrial m..
Read MoreIf you get work from your good local reputation or the web, don’t be surprised if a competitor is using the internet to covertly steal your work and in the process, potentially damaging your reputation. In the last two months McKays has had 3 contractor clients seek advice about unlawful int..
Read MoreWant to improve your Google ranking? You need to be careful how you, and your web designer, go about this or you could find yourself in a Federal Court case such as the one below… One of the strategies used by businesses and their website designers to improve their ranking in interne..
Read MoreFrom time to time, for various reasons, you or your clients may wish to change the trustee of a trust. When this occurs, all the trust assets held in the name of the retiring trustee need to be transferred to the name of the new trustee. Sometimes, the trust assets may include one or more m..
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