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Arbitration

Norway

In a little-noticed decision handed down just over two years ago, the Norwegian Supreme Court considered the intricate question of whether a foreign arbitral award against a company could become vested with direct effect against the company’s sole shareholder through a 'piercing of the corporate veil'.

In a recent case the Norwegian Supreme Court considered whether an arbitrator can be called as a witness. It also ruled on the extent to which a party's written outline may be used as evidence in an action to annul an arbitration award. The decision partly establishes new references for these issues.

The Arbitration Act 2004 came into force on January 1 2005, coinciding with the repeal of Chapter 32 (Sections 452 to 473) of the Civil Procedure Act. The new act brought clarity to a number of issues and introduced uniform regulation of Norwegian and international arbitration. This update discusses some of the practical changes it made to the law.

Competition

Norway

The Ministry of Administration and Reform has decided to raise the turnover thresholds with effect from January 1 2007. Under the new regulations, a transaction must be notified to the authority where the undertakings concerned have a combined annual turnover in Norway of at least Nkr50 million and each of the undertakings concerned has an annual turnover in Norway of over Nkr20 million.

The Ministry of Modernization has issued a regulation setting out the principles for calculating fines and the conditions for obtaining leniency. Among other things, the regulation empowers the Competition Authority to impose administrative fines of up to 10% of the global turnover of the undertaking in order to penalize violations of Sections 10 and 11 of the Competition Act.

The Competition Act 2004 introduced mandatory notification of concentrations as of May 1 2004. Earlier this year the Competition Authority announced that it would start actively enforcing this obligation. The authority has issued statements of objections to four undertakings for failure to notify concentrations and is now contemplating issuing fines to each of these undertakings.

Norway's new Competition Act is modelled on the EU/EEA competition rules and is considerably stricter than the legislation it replaces. The act introduces a general prohibition against restrictive practices, a prohibition against abuse of a dominant position and a requirement for the mandatory prior notification of concentrations exceeding a certain turnover threshold.

The Norwegian government has presented its proposal for a new Norwegian Competition Act and a new EEA Competition Act. The former amends anti-competitive behaviour regulations and merger control rules, among other things, and introduces an administrative fine to aid enforcement. The latter aims to ensure that the competition rules of the EEA Agreement can be enforced in Norway.

Parliament has amended the Competition Act by introducing a new provision which allows dominance as long as a well-functioning Nordic or European market exists, and such dominance does not have negative effects for Norwegian customers. However, the provision does not consider whether dominance can actually exist in a well-functioning market.

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E-commerce

Norway

The Act on Certain Aspects of Electronic Commerce and Other Information Society Services, implementing the E-commerce Directive, recently entered into force. The new act mirrors the E-commerce Directive in all essential features, except for the articles regulating the liability of intermediary service providers and some details of the information requirements.

A new Sale of Consumer Goods Act came into force on July 1 2002. The act consolidates the existing rules governing consumer purchases in order to make it easier for consumers to obtain information on their rights.

In a recent judgment the Oslo City Court held that the Norwegian telecommunications company Tele2 Norge AS was liable as an accomplice in the communication of illegal pornographic material offered through newsgroups hosted by Tele2.

A draft Act on E-commerce will implement the EU E-commerce Directive, and proposes a notice and take-down procedure with regard to cashing and hosting which goes beyond the directive's requirements.

In two recent decisions the Norwegian Competition Authority has considered different competition law aspects related to developing markets for e-commerce. This update examines the decisions that the authority reached in each case.

The relationship between trademark protection and domain names under the country code top-level domain .no has to some extent been clarified by a number of recent court decisions concerning the marks CARLSBERG, SONY and KVAERNER.

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Information Technology

Norway

Including: Copyright; Patent Protection; Protection of Databases; Layout Design of Integrated Circuits

In April 2000 an act concerning the handling of personal information was introduced before the Norwegian Parliament. The new act applies to data which is handled electronically or manually. One of the main objectives is to give each individual control over the handling of any information that may identify him or her.

Intellectual Property

Norway

The High Court has overruled a district court decision by finding that a man did not commit copyright infringement by including direct links on a website to music files illegally placed on other websites. The court held that only persons who actually upload a music file onto the Internet use the work in such a way as constitutes an unauthorized public performance.

Norway's Company Trade Name Regulation has been amended, with a new regulation entering into force on March 1 2004. To be registered in the Company Register, a company trade name need no longer be obviously apparent as such. Rather, the only requirement is that the name not be identical to an existing company trade name.

An Oslo court has ruled that an internet portal provider cannot be held liable for copyright infringements committed by music downloaders using file-sharing programs offered on the portal. The court held that the infringing acts resulted from the conscious decisions of individual users and would continue to occur even without the portal's assistance.

A recent white paper has proposed a number of amendments to the Norwegian Patents Act in order to bring it into line with the Patent Directive. Among other things, the proposals would open the door to patents for inventions which apply to plants and animals, as well as methods for producing plants and animals which are not exclusively biological.

Legal doctrine has long asserted a special rule of interpretation under which copyright transfer agreements are interpreted narrowly in favour of the author when they are unclear. However, a recent Supreme Court decision shows that publishers and others may still obtain rights to copyright-protected material that is not explicitly mentioned in an agreement.

The Ministry of Cultural and Church Affairs recently introduced a discussion paper detailing amendments to the Copyright Act, which will bring it into line with the EU Copyright Directive. The proposals include prohibiting copying from unlawful copies, introducing compensation for private copying, and extending the rights of performers and producers of phonograms and films.

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