Professor Cameron Stewart and Associate Professor Ian Kerridge, both from the University of Sydney, have guest edited the issue, which contains articles from a range of academics and professionals from diverse disciplines, such as law, ethics, religion and medicine.

In their Guest Editorial, Professor Stewart and Associate Professor Kerridge state:

“Umbilical cord blood has traditionally been treated as a waste product but with the growing scientific understanding of stem cells, it has become a vital source of stem cells for medical treatment. The stem cells derived from umbilical cord blood can be used in haematopoietic stem cell transplantation, which is a curative therapy for many cancers (leukaemia, lymphoma), bone marrow failure syndromes, haemoglobinopathies, immunodeficiencies and inborn errors of metabolism. As the science for stem cell therapies improves, there is also a real potential for umbilical cord blood to be used as part of a regime for emerging regenerative therapies.”

This potential for the future use of umbilical cord blood gives rise to a range of legal, ethical and social issues. The articles deal with these issues through the specific coverage of the  development of stem cells from umbilical cord blood and blood banking, religious perspectives on umbilical cord blood banking, the public-private divide, racially conditional donation and the application of the lessons learnt from the protection of human genetic information to umbilical cord blood banking.

The article listing is as follows:

• Development of stem cells from umbilical cord blood and blood banking: “Non-controversial” and “free of political and ethical debate”? – Loane Skene
• Religious perspectives on umbilical cord blood banking – Christopher FC Jordens, Michelle AC O’Connor,Ian H Kerridge, Cameron Stewart, Andrew Cameron, Damien Keown, Rabbi Jeremy Lawrence, Andrew McGarrity, Abdulaziz Sachedina and Bernadette Tobin
• Umbilical cord blood banking: Beyond the public-private divide – Michelle AC O’Connor, Gabriel Samuel, Christopher FC Jordens and Ian H Kerridge
• Racially conditional donation: The example of umbilical cord blood –Paul A Komesaroff, Ian H Kerridge, Cameron Stewart, Gabriel Samuel, Wendy Lipworth and Christopher FC Jordens
• The ethical, legal and social implications of umbilical cord blood banking: Learning important lessons from the protection of human genetic information – David Weisbrot

To read the abstracts for each article and see what else was published in this issue, visit our Journals Talk website.

Winner: Tyrone Berger

Thomson Reuters and the General Editor of the Australian Intellectual Property Journal, Associate Professor David Brennan, are pleased to announce that Tyrone Berger is the winner of the inaugural intellectual property law essay competition, run in conjunction with the Journal. Tyrone is a PhD candidate in the Faculty of Law at Monash  University. Tyrone’s thesis examines the governance of intellectual property rights, standards and competition policy in the emerging Australian Electric Vehicle (EV) industry.

In Tyrone’s paper, “Trade Mark Dilution in Australia Revisited: How Far Have We Come?”, he discusses whether or not an anti-dilution provision exists in the Trade Marks Act 1995 (Cth), and whether such a provision is desirable. Trade mark dilution occurs when distinctive trade marks are likely to be harmed by third party use even in the absence of confusion.

Tyrone’s essay was unanimously judged to be the leading essay submission. The judging panel, consisting of the Honourable Mr Justice Gummow AC, Ann Dufty (founding Editor of the Australian Intellectual Property Journal) and Associate Professor David Lindsay (Monash University), found it to be well-written, thoroughly researched and particularly interesting in that it addressed an important unresolved issue in Australian trade mark law.

Runner up: Bob Vangenne

Thomson Reuters and the General Editor would also like to congratulate the runner-up, Robert (Bob) Vangenne. Bob is Canadian and studied at Bond University, graduating in August 2011. Bob specialised in IT/IP and ecommerce law and is fascinated with web based marketing in general but specifically the developing integration of gaming theory with social media as a commercial marketing tool.

Bob’s article investigates the new expansion in domain names coming under the new generic top level domain name (gTLD) system.  The article reviews the process in acquiring a gTLD and searches to understand the business model that will benefit under the new system.

Both the winning and runner-up articles will be published in the first Part of 2012 in the Australian Intellectual Property Journal.  The Journal examines intellectual property law issues and developments within Australia and around the globe.

Some of the changes we have made include:

Saving editable Forms into your own document management system

Many of you want to be able to save not only the final locked pdf into your own document management system, but also an editable version of your Form. You can now do this.

If you would like to manage multiple versions of the same Form from within your own document management system (rather than utilising the “Profiles” function within the ASIC Forms application itself), you can do so as follows.

After entering data into your Form, select the menu item File and then Save As. You can save your Form data to a location of your choosing within your own document management system.

As an example, you may wish to create a network folder for all users within your organisation on a shared network drive.  You can name the folders and files by whatever naming convention you choose.

To access your saved versions of the Forms, you can:

(1)      Double click on the saved Form Data File in your shared network drive. This will open the Form in your ASIC Forms program (which must be installed) where you can edit it and create a new PDF. You may then wish to save the updated Form Data File back into your document management system and either overwrite the previously saved version or save it as a new version.

OR

(2)    Open ASIC Forms and then go to File and Open form from File. Then browse to the location of your saved Form Data File and select Open.

Resizing of home page

In the initial version of ASIC Forms, the home page was a fixed size. We have updated this screen and it is now resizeable to suit your screen size and your preferences.

Clearing your Form

You can now clear each page of your Form. If you don’t want to set up a new profile, but instead want to reuse a Form you’ve already completed, but with different details, you can now simply click on the button at the top of each page saying “Clear this page” and all the data will be deleted (and yes, it does ask you to confirm before deleting to ensure you don’t accidently delete the wrong page!).

Calendar

Once you’ve opened the Calendar, previously you had to select a date to close it. This was a small bug and has now been remedied. You can now click anywhere on your page and the calendar will close.

We are committed to improving our products and will continue to upgrade and release new enhancements. If you have any questions or feedback, please feel free to leave a comment below. And don’t forget, we are ASIC’s official publisher and we publish a range of other ASIC works to give you full coverage of all your compliance responsibilities.

What is in each product?

The Guide provides expert analysis and commentary on local government and planning decisions from around Australia.

The Journal provides complementary and topical legal and policy-focussed articles and section notes on developments in the practice and administration of local government responsibilities.

Why are they being combined?

Combined, these products become a comprehensive analytical guide, assisting you through the practical and theoretical aspects of local government and planning practice.

Rather than require subscribers to maintain a subscription to two complementary works on local government and planning practice, all content can now be found within the one publication.

The Local Government and Planning Law Guide is not currently available online. As a combined product, the summaries of local government and planning decisions will for the first time be made available online.

When are they being combined?

The first combined Part of the Journal will be publishing in March 2012 in both paper and online.

Who are the General Editors?

The General Editors from the Journal, John Mant and Mary-Lynne Taylor, will now be working with Glen McLeod and the team at Squire Sanders (formerly Minter Ellison, Perth). John and Mary-Lynne will continue to focus on the Journal content, and the team at Squire Sanders will continue to focus on the Guide content. However they will now be able to share their extensive knowledge and experience with each other to provide you with current, topical and insightful analysis of local government and planning law issues.

How do I get more information?

Simply visit our Journals Talk website for information on all of our journals or visit our estore to subscribe. Alternatively, contact one of our Customer Care representatives on 1300 304 195 or at LTA.Service@thomsonreuters.com.

If you are interested in submitting an essay of between 5,000-10,000 words on intellectual property law, you could win $1,000 cash and have your essay published in the Journal.

 The winning article will be selected by a judging panel consisting of:

• the Honourable Mr Justice Gummow AC
• Ann Dufty, founding Editor of the Australian Intellectual Property Journal
• Associate Professor David Lindsay (MonashUniversity)

Want to know more about the competition and how to enter? Click here for full details. 

Send your entries in now!

To give you an idea of what you can expect from the Journal, we’ve put together an Information Package containing all the information you need to help you decide if you want to subscribe to the journal, plus abstracts of the articles that will be included in the first issue.

The annual McCallum Medal presentation competition, named in honour of industrial relations expert Professor Ron McCallum AO, was held on Wednesday the 19^th of October at the Clayton Utz offices in Sydney. Five finalists presented on topics relating to workplace relations law in front of a panel of judges and a room full of lawyers, judges, academics, family members and others.

Back row L to R: Yangdao Wilson Lu (finalist), Professor Ron McCallum AO, Senior Deputy President Drake, Mr Joe Catanzariti, the Honourable Justice Buchanan, Fiona Graney (finalist). Front row L to R: Nicola Bailey (finalist), Andrea Ho (winner), Oliver Pase (runner-up).

The winning presentation came from Andrea Ho, a lawyer at Blake Dawson, who used an entertaining role-play to highlight the practical considerations of general protections applications.

More photos and information on the event can be found here.

Part of the prize includes publication of the article supporting the presentation in Thomson Reuters’ Workplace Review, a journal providing practical insights into workplace relations law and practice. Andrea’s article will be published in our Summer edition in both paper and online, due out in December 2011.

Thomson Reuters would like to congratulate Andrea Ho and the four finalists, Oliver Pase (runner up), Nicola Bailey, Fiona Graney and Yangdao Wilson Lu. We are proud to continue to support an event that fosters excellence in legal practice for young lawyers in the industrial relations sphere.

If you want access to a range of articles, case notes, comments and more on a broad range of practice, procedure and litigation topics (eg pre-litigation, arbitration, discovery, class actions and lawyers’ ethical duties just to name a few), then this is the journal for you.

Its unique benefit for practitioners is as a forum in which the more fundamental changes to litigation and practice can also be addressed, including current issues such as the impact of technology on the conduct of matters, inside and out of the courtroom, and moves to electronic discovery and documentation.

Led by the General Editor Dr Damien Cremean and guided by the Editorial Board comprising practitioners and experts from around Australia as well as from the United Kingdom, Canada and New Zealand, the Journal will address practice and litigation issues which vitally affect litigation practice.

The journal is peer-reviewed and will be available in both hard copy and online.  For more information or to subscribe now, visit our estore today.

Professor Boland retired from the Appeal Division of the Family Court of Australia in February 2011. She is now working at The University of Sydney as an Adjunct Professor, teaching family law. Prior to Professor Boland’s appointment to the Bench in 1999 she practised in family law and product liability at Corrs Chambers Westgarth.

We are delighted to have Professor Jennifer Boland join the team and are certain that her experience and knowledge will benefit the Review significantly.

If you are interested in reading more about the Review or in submitting an article to the Review, please click here.

The Cleardocs Independent Contractor/Consultancy Agreement enables you to clearly set out the terms and conditions of the relationship between an organisation and an independent contractor/consultant who will perform services for the organisation.

Ordering the Agreement through Cleardocs takes about 15 minutes.

The master documents, interface, related documents and information for the Independent Contractor/Consultancy Agreement have been signed off by our lawyers at Maddocks — a top 20 Australian law firm.

Go to Independent Contractor Agreement for more information or call the Cleardocs Helpline on 1300 307 343 if you have any questions.