Mark Weston

Mark Weston

About Mark

Mark works across all areas of commercial law, information technology (IT) law, intellectual property (IP) law, on-line commerce law and media law.

Some of Mark's more well-known clients include Groupon, RTL Group S.A., Elstree Film Studios, Sanyo, mysupermarket.co.uk, Retailcorp Brands LLC, Maxell, The Gulf Marketing Group, Playboy UK, Imagination Technologies Plc, GOOP.com (Gwyneth Paltrow) and the BBC.

Mark appears regularly on BBC1 (usually providing advice on-screen to BBC Watchdog) and also on Sky News as a legal commentator. He also likes blogging and writing books, which are available at all good bookshops!

Mark has extensive experience in advising clients on all manner of commercial matters (such as business planning and solutions, franchising, distribution, agency and marketing) through branding and intellectual property exploitation and licensing, to advice and documentation regarding hardware and software issues (such as development, licensing, maintenance and distribution, SaaS and cloud, Internet transactional solutioning, B2B, B2C and B2G electronic commerce, outsourcing, facilities management, procurement, IT policies, data protection (privacy) and freedom of information issues).

He is also experienced in dealing with software disputes and IT litigation. The increasingly extensive media side of his practice relates primarily to publishing (both real world and digital content), to games and gaming platforms (and particularly new transmedia technologies), advising companies about their advertising onscreen, online and in print and managing their public communications strategies generally (dealing with the OFT and ASA in the process) - and also a smattering of television, film and music exploitation.

News and views from Mark RSS

OFT says surcharge ban should be for all businesses

OFT says surcharge ban should be for all businesses Under recent proposals published by the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS), businesses will be banned from including excessive payment surcharges in some business-to-consumer (B2C) contracts. That would mean that a business would not be able to charge a fee to process debit or credit… Learn more

Fixed exchange rate needed to be expressly covered in contract

Procter & Gamble v Svenska, Court of Appeal P&G supplied products to S. The contract provided for prices stipulated in euros, with payment to be made in pounds. There was no mention in the contract itself of any particular exchange rate. However, a document appended to the contract showed P&G’s manufacturing budgets and had an… Learn more

CAP says sales promotions should display significant conditions clearly

The Committee of Advertising Practice (CAP) has released guidance which says that businesses that run sales promotions should state any “significant conditions” clearly for consumers to decide whether or not to participate. CAP said that businesses that failed to make those significant conditions clear risked being in breach of the CAP Code (the code of… Learn more

Virgin advert contradicted by small print, say ASA

Virgin Media distributed leaflets to people’s homes to give information about fibre optic cables that it was installing. The small print of the leaflet said that certain “individual premises” may be unable to connect to fibre optic services. The Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) received a complaint that the leaflet was misleading. The ASA ruled that… Learn more

Court of Appeal says agent’s online disparagement of principal not sufficient to terminate contract

Crocs Europe BV v Anderson (trading as Spectrum Agencies), Court of Appeal Spectrum Agencies acted as CE’s UK agent. Spectrum’s employees posted some light-hearted comments on a website that customers saw, which poked fun at CE’s poor delivery record. CE terminated the agency agreement for disparagement of the products and an alleged repudiatory breach. The… Learn more

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