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AI developers – can you still get patents? The crusade of Dr Stephen Thaler, the DABUS machine and the ongoing debate on the impact of AI on patent law has dominated the patent landscape over the past year.  To some extent, it has overshadowed another equally important issue in light of the rapid ... To what extent can post-dated OECD commentaries be taken into account in interpreting a double tax treaty? This question - which is of utmost importance as the OECD commentaries provide key insights to tax authorities, taxpayers and judges, on how a double tax treaty shall be applied - is highly debated among the OECD member countries. Reasserting a recommenda... Close collaboration: operational resilience and cyber resilience Last week the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA), the Prudential Regulation Authority (PRA) and the Bank of England published long-awaited policy statements and supervisory materials setting out their final rules and guidance on operational resilience. The... The Netherlands proposes new legislation to deal with asymmetrical transfer pricing adjustments On 4 March 2021, the Dutch government presented a draft bill for comments by interested parties introducing fundamental changes to Dutch transfer pricing rules. If enacted, the new rules would apply as of 1 January 2022, with material retroactive effect t... Room for improvement: Proposals to strengthen draft European digital regulation Since publication in December 2020, the European Commission’s proposed new rules for digital gatekeepers (the Digital Markets Act, or “DMA”) have been hotly debated in the EU Parliament (for our analysis of the proposals, see here).  A new report from Pro... The Spanish Supreme Court confirms that non-Spanish sovereign wealth funds may be fully exempt from tax on Spanish source dividends On 24 February 2021, the Spanish Supreme Court handed down a significant ruling which prohibits differences in tax treatment between Spanish resident sovereign wealth funds and non-Spanish resident sovereign wealth funds (the Ruling). In a previous post, ... GDPR extra-territoriality in a post-Brexit world As UK and EU businesses grapple with the complexities of the post-Brexit world, one of the first key questions for businesses from a data privacy perspective is whether their processing is subject to the UK or EU regime (or both). We discuss in our briefi... Why diversity and inclusion are matters of fairness: understanding regulatory expectations through the lens of product and service design My colleague, Ben Goldstein, wrote about why diversity and inclusion are regulatory issues following a number of high profile speeches at the UK Financial Conduct Authority (FCA). Nikhil Rathi (CEO of the FCA) explained that a lack of diversity at the top... UK and other non-EU taxpayers: beware of the Spanish VAT use and enjoyment rule! Following a previous post on the Spanish VAT rules for UK taxpayers after Brexit, this post addresses the so-called use and enjoyment VAT rule.  Article 59(a) of the Principal VAT Directive allows Spain, and any other Member State, to introduce an excepti... Linking and copyright: one size fits all (for now) Linking has always been controversial, as it sits at the intersection between copyright law and the reality and functioning of the internet.  Hyperlinks ‘web the Web’, and there is a tricky balance to be struck between the interests of copyright holders o...