Business Bites

Airbnb is the latest ‘big tech’ monolith to run rings around our outdated legal apparatus

It may seem tangential to those who do not work in real estate, but there is a court case on the continent with major implications for the future of many sectors, which reached a critical phase yesterday. It is the case of Airbnb vs the French tourism association, in which…

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Vera Lynn’s gin dispute is a window on a fascinating trademark problem

Everyone knows a bit of cockney rhyming slang, but what if your own name is the one being used, and then somebody tries to use it as their brand? This is exactly what happened to the singer Dame Vera Lynn, who has just been awarded £1,800 in legal costs from…

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‘Jingle bots’ are artificially ramming online shopping baskets to use up stock

I have my reservations about this story because we spend a lot of time in our office poring over the news for interesting stories and takes, and we haven’t seen it reported like this before. But it comes from a company called Radware, which is a publicly traded web app…

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The election is over – time for the Tories to deliver for small businesses

It now looks as though political stasis and all the damage that does to business will be lifted in 2020. Boris Johnson’s victory in the election is the Tories’ strongest since the Thatcher era, and gives him great scope to implement bold policies. At this juncture it’s worth taking a…

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Small business owners dip into personal wealth to survive? Of course they do

We are living through an era where there is much discussion about capitalism, taxes, executive pay and so on. Is Philip Green a monster for raiding the BHS coffers when they were his to raid? Is the pay of a city CEO morally acceptable when his lowest paid workers are…

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