September's Newsletter
posted 28th September 2017
Greenaway Scott Advises BitCoin Leader In Seven-figure Investment Deal
Greenaway Scott Group advises bitcoin gold exchange company Vaultoro on its 7 figure investment from FinLab AG.
Greenaway Scott recently advised Vaultoro, the first and longest-running bitcoin / allocated gold exchange company on their seven-figure investment from German-based fintech investor FinLab AG.
Vaultoro is an asset-based security solution that enables people to not only secure Tangible assets like gold and silver bars but also digital assets like Bitcoin, Ethereum, Dash and IOTA. The company enables the mainstream to be able to move away from holding pure paper like Euros or Pounds and into tangible fully insured, audited and allocated assets like gold (and soon silver). Vaultoro clients are able to save in allocated gold, secured in a top-tier high-security Swiss bullion vault and spend it down to the cent anywhere that Visa or MasterCard are accepted.
Vaultoro is the first company of this type in the world to offer its clients a real-time debit card and internet banking functionality using gold without the need of a bank. All gold is allocated in the users name as their legal property, not on Vaultoro's balance sheets, so if anything happened to Vaultoro not even liquidators could touch their clients' assets.
With the investment from a serious fintech focused VC like FinLab, Vaultoro can materialize their vision of further expanding its bitcoin/gold platform into a multi-asset platform a lot faster. Vaultoro's first upgrade will be a way for anyone to save in allocated gold and spend that gold using the world's first real-time gold-backed debit card.
Joshua Scigala, Co-Founder of Vaultoro commented "The investment from FinLab AG into Vaultoro will enable us to scale fast. Our mission is to enable as many people as possible to secure their savings in assets away from the banking system before another major currency crisis."
Matthew Sutton, Corporate Director at Greenaway Scott commented 'We are delighted to have worked with Vaultoro on this transaction. It's been great to be a part of the growth of such an innovative growing company and we are very excited to work alongside them as continue with their global expansion.."
Commercial news
Negotiating Standard Terms
It is common for parties to deal on the other party's standard written terms. However, the Court of Appeal has recently held that negotiated standard terms are not considered dealing on written standard terms for the purposes under the Unfair Contract Terms Act 1977 (UCTA).
Under UCTA a requirement of reasonableness is imposed upon a clause that aims to limit or exclude a party's liability for breach of contract, provided that the agreement was made on one of the party's standard terms. However, written terms are not defined under UCTA.
Very often standard terms are negotiated between the parties. The question must then be asked whether the terms have remained as the standard terms. The negotiations may have caused substantial amendments to the extent that the terms are no longer the standard terms.
In previous cases, it was accepted that if the clauses in relation to the liability had not changed then the terms remained as the standard terms. However, in more recent cases the changes to the standard terms have been more narrowly interpreted.
It has now been stated that the terms must be automatically adopted without any opportunity to alter or negotiate for them to remain as the standard terms.
Where standard terms are negotiated and subsequently amended by both parties, there is more chance of the court finding that they are no longer the standard terms, however, it will always be a question of fact.
If you would like advice on protecting your intellectual property in any commercial contracts please contact the Commercial and IP team by emailing commercial@greenawayscott.comor visit our website at www.greenawayscott.com.
Employment news
Workplace Privacy
A major ruling was passed this month in conclusion to a decade-long appeal of the case of Bărbulescu v Romania. This case involved the dismissal of an employee and the reasonableness for an employer to monitor an employee's emails. The European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) ruled against the decision made in the Romanian courts in 2007, which was that a Romanian employer acted lawfully when it monitored an employee's email account.
Although the employer had a strict rule in place against the use of computers for personal purposes, there was no reference to monitoring emails or computer use. The employee was asked to set up an email account to answer clients' enquiries but used it to exchange private messages with his brother and fiancée.
The ECHR'S initial ruling was misreported as creating a right for employers to spy on their staff's activities at work. The employee claimed that the privacy of his emails should have been protected by Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights, which guarantees respect for private and family life and correspondence.
The ECHR initially decided that the firm had acted reasonably in monitoring his emails in the context of disciplinary proceedings and found there had been no violation of his rights. On appeal, it was held that employees had a right to privacy in the workplace and they should be warned in advance if their emails are to be monitored.
Although the ECHR cannot establish new laws, its decision could form significant guidance and legal precedent about when and how far monitoring is permissible by an employer. The ECHR is an institution comprised of the 47-member state Council of Europe and not the European Union, meaning its decisions will still carry weight in Britain after Brexit.
The employment team at Greenaway Scott are more than happy to assist with any clarification or further information regarding recruitment. Please contact us at employment@greenawayscott.com
