The forms for the Corona income replacement allowance for self-employed persons are now available online. Information can be found here: 6.03 - Corona income replacement allowance.
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The legal standstill pursuant to Art. 62 SchKG comes into force on 19 March 2020 at 07:00h and applies until 4 April 2020 at 24:00h. During this time, no debt collection actions can be taken...
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TCM and other licensed complementary medicine therapists may (indeed should) continue to carry out their activities, albeit with conditions and restrictions.
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The notarial provisions on electronic AGMs are not only permissible for meetings of "companies", but are applicable to all legal entities (cooperatives, foundations, associations).
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The cancellation of a major event due to COVID 19 measures could at best be a case of application of Art. 119 CO (impossibility without fault).
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Basic information on applying for short-time work and short-time work compensation (KAE).
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The arrangement of home offices has legal aspects, but these can be regulated temporarily and pragmatically with minimal effort.
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The employer's access to e-mail addresses in the name of an employee is problematic from the point of view of personal rights and data protection and must be regulated in a set of rules.
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Corona and COVID-19 impose several additional obligations on employers. How can workers be protected without productivity suffering? What is the obligation to pay wages? Can home office be ordered?
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Are the effects of the coronavirus on the ability to provide contractually guaranteed services a case of force majeure?
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After almost two years of the GDPR, the fines from the regulators are starting to pile up. Buying or merging with a company that lacks proper cybersecurity, or one that is not in compliance with the GDPR, becomes a considerable risk. For instance, Marriott was fined £99 million by the Information Commissioner's Office (ICO), which is the UK regulator, after hackers stole the guest records of the Starwood Hotels & Resorts Worldwide that it had acquired. A study by Merrill Corporation has shown that over half (55%) of practitioners surveyed across EMEA said they had worked on M&A transactions that had not progressed because of concerns around a target company's data protection and compliance with GDPR. Therefore, non - compliance with GDPR can become a serious issue for the seller.
Read moreOn 18 December 2019, the Council of States dealt for the second time with the question of accession and the detailed consultation on the indirect counter-proposal to the Corporate Responsibility Initiative.
Read moreIn a recent article in Data Protection for Practitioners, Yves Gogniat looks at IoT, wearables, smart devices and other connected devices. Under the title "Can I collect personal data through connected devices without consent?", he explores the questions to what extent the consent of the data subject is necessary for the use of connected devices and how to deal with connected devices that do not have their own interface.
The article is available here.
Read moreAs of 1 November 2019, the amendments concerning the abolition of the bearer share are expected to come into force. The planned revision of the law will not only bring about changes under civil law, but also new penal sanctions.
Read moreThe following checklist contains some helpful hints for the legally secure selection of an IT provider as well as for the contract review. However, the checklist does not claim to be exhaustive, as different and individual questions arise with every IT procurement.
Read moreThe National Council's State Policy Committee (SPK-NR) has concluded its deliberations on the bill for the total revision of the Data Protection Act(17.059). However, the bill was only narrowly adopted, by the casting vote of the president, after nine votes to nine with seven abstentions. It shows that there is still no agreement among the various interest groups and that the revision of the law will therefore take longer than originally planned. In addition, the Commission decided that the new law should only come into force after a transitional period of two years. This would mean that we will probably not have a new data protection law until around 2022/2023.
Read moreFashion ID operates the website of the Düsseldorf fashion house Peek & Cloppenburg and had integrated Facebook's "Like" button on the website. The Consumer Advice Centre NRW considered this to be a breach of data protection, as the integration automatically resulted in the transfer of data to Facebook. In the opinion of the consumer advice centre, the necessary consent for the transfer of data to Facebook was therefore lacking. The case is still being decided under the old data protection law, but since the term "controller" is very similar in both laws, the ruling will also be relevant under the GDPR.
The ECJ has ruled that Facebook's "Like" button was not implemented in a data protection-compliant manner and that the website operator bears joint responsibility for such plugins.
Read moreA Dutch hospital was fined because several unauthorised hospital employees accessed the electronic patient file of a prominent person (brief information in English as well as original report in Dutch).
Such incidents are unfortunately not isolated cases. In Switzerland, for example, the attempted sale of Michael Schumacher's patient file caused a stir, and in Germany, the Tugce case revealed that despite internal guidelines, an above-average number of hospital staff read Ms Tugce's patient file.
Read moreInfluencer marketing has recently gained popularity. In contrast to other countries - such as Germany - there have not yet been any decisions on influencer advertising in Switzerland. The question of when a post is considered surreptitious advertising and thus violates competition law has not yet been clarified in Switzerland.
The Foundation for Consumer Protection had now filed complaints with the Fairness Commission against several (prominent) influencers in order to create legal clarity in Switzerland as well.
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