EU and WTO Members Reach Deal to Simplify Trade in Services

On December 2nd, 67 members of the World Trade Organization (WTO), including the European Union, concluded negotiations on an agreement to simplify trade in services and to reduce red tape in that sector. The signatories, including key players such as the United States, the United Kingdom, EU, and China, represent...

New guidelines on the use of cookies clarify the practices for giving consent

The Finnish Transport and Communications Agency, Traficom, has published new cookie guidelines for both website users (in Finnish) and service providers (in Finnish) in September 2021. The guidelines also apply to other tracking technologies similar to cookies, such as tracking pixels and cookies stored through mobile applications.  The aim of the guidelines is, in...

Taxation of eSports in Finland should be clarified

While eSports is classified as sports in Finnish taxation, it involves several interpretative factors within the field of tax law. One issue that gamers face, is the versatile stream of income which cause uncertainty under the current tax regime. For many, the most important source of income are tournament prizes,...

The Epic Battle Continues

In September 2020, we discussed the Epic Games vs. Apple (and Google) case in our blog post. To cut a long story short, Epic Games introduced a new payment system for its best-selling mobile game, Fortnite, offering an alternative in-app purchase method. The new payment system bypasses the 30 %...

Labor law questions in startup companies

There are many specific questions in the field of labor law that startup companies should take into account gladly already when planning the actions of the company. In the beginning, the financial resources of the company can be limited, and the need for permanent employees can vary from time to...

Loot Boxes – the next level

We have already covered some basics relating to loot boxes in our article. After writing the article there have been some major developments in the gaming world - so let’s take a look at the recent issues regarding the infamous in-game reward mechanism.  What exactly is going on? During the fall of 2020,...

Enforcing your intellectual property rights

How to protect your intellectual property There are several forms of intellectual property that your company may own, for example trademarks, patents, designs, utility models or copyrighted works. Although confidentiality laws may protect some of these assets, it is crucial that your company remembers to take active measures and look...