Hope Island is one of the Gold Coast’s most exclusive suburbs. Home to an enclave of exclusive housing estates, such as Sanctuary Cove and Hope Island Resort, with several world class golf courses meandering in between.
The property website Domain are currently running a series of articles on selling a property, covering aspects from presentation and market advise, to sales tactics and the conveyancing process itself.
Brisbane came alive this weekend for the annual Teneriffe Festival. The streets were lined with a festival of food, markets and entertainment.
So you’ve spent countless weekends scouring the suburbs of Brisbane, or the Gold Coast for that perfect property and you think you’ve finally found ‘the one’ and are ready to put in an offer and sign a contract of sale. It’s right about now that you need to tap the brakes every so slightly. There’s no point rushing in and signing your name, as the entire conveyancing process will be dictated by this contract, so you want to make sure you’ve got it right before signing.
So you’ve had your property on the market for a while and have now signed a contract of sale and sold your property. First of all congratulations on the sale! While getting that offer may be exciting at first, we’re sure that a bit of stress is beginning to creep into your mind as you start to consider the long list of things you now have to take care.
You’ve probably heard the term ‘Australia Tax’ thrown around quite a bit in the media and it certainly deserves the attention it gets. We’ve always paid more for physical products in Australia due to our location and the cost of shipping goods here and distributing them. However is it fair that we also pay a great deal more than other countries for digital products? After all what extra costs are there to justify if the product is simply distributed over the internet?
A significant decision has been handed down by the Full Bench of the Federal Court of Australia today in regards to intellectual property and the human body. The decision centres around the BRCA1 gene mutation, commonly known as the ‘breast cancer gene’. In a landmark decision the court has found that a private company is within its rights to hold a patent over this gene.
Social media is so widely used nowadays that even you’re grandma is liking and commenting on your posts! It’s the place where the news hits first and if you’re not on it then you’re viewed as a bit of a rebel. With social media so commonplace there are certain pitfalls that come with it and over-sharing about something that happened in the workplace could land you in a lot of trouble with your employer.
The Federal Government's metadata retention policy has been widely publicized and widely criticized, but at this stage the Government is pushing ahead with it. Much of the criticism leveled at the policy has been the lack of clarification of what exactly metadata is, with many Government Ministers failing to provide a clear response when quizzed about it.
We’ve previously highlighted how Copyright law in Australia is in a sense ‘broken’ as it fails to keep pace with emerging technologies. What is considered as the biggest flaw in copyright law in this country is the lack of a ‘fair use’ defence to copyright infringement, which covers the ‘recycling’ of content, where it is repurposed or modified by another author.
The Personal Property Securities Act 2009 (“PPSA”) came into effect on 30 January 2012, bringing with it a raft of changes to the enforcement of securities over personal property, including a new unified Federal law.
One of the most common small business structures in Australia is a partnership, whereby two people agree to go into business together and each takes a stake in both the businesses profits and losses. In most cases however, no formal agreement is entered into between the partners as they are usually close friends who don’t foresee anything going wrong.
Social media is a fantastic tool for keeping in touch with people. It allows you to broadcast an update to close friends, acquaintances or to the public. This may seem like a great tool, however like any other tool it can be abused and there can be serious legal consequences as a result. For example, something we see all too often is the defamation of individuals via social media.
