The Legal 500

This is an important year in Finland on the taxation front. New rules restrict interest deductions and increase the transfer tax related to the sale of shares in housing and real estate. Additionally, two tax incentives support research and development activities, as well as innovation and growth.

The Finnish Government proposes that suits related to intellectual property rights ("IPR") be in future heard exclusively by the Market Court. Bill 124/2012, submitted to the Parliament on 4 October and currently debated in the Law Committee, contains proposals on new acts on the Market Court and on proceedings before the Market Court as well as amendments to various existing statutes.

Are all members of consortia jointly liable for the entire project or may they allocate liability and responsibility among them?

The European Commission has recently introduced two important regulatory packages that seek to respond to the challenges posed by rapidly developing trading technologies, particularly so-called high frequency trading. If the new regulations are adopted as drafted, considerable changes are in store for both those entities that engage in high frequency trading and the trading venues providing them access to the market.

Lotta Uusitalo, Anne Petäjäniemi-Björklund and Leea Salminen, Attorneys at Law of Procopé & Hornborg, have written a book on the implications of competition law on information exchange.

The EC waste directive (2008/98/EC) will be implemented in Finland by the new Finnish Waste Act, which will enter into force on May 1, 2012.

Introduction Robert S Peckar Peckar & Abramson, PC 3

Finland Aimo Halonen Mäkitalo Rantanen & Co Ltd 70

Written by Martin von Willebrand

The legal rules often play a key role when it comes to business models in software businesses and notably in free and open source software projects. This is particularly true when the project owner wants to maintain some level of control over the software and the project itself. The balance between control and freedom is achieved by legal tools and policies, such as licenses, compliance policies, contracts, trademarks, organization rules, contribution policies, only to name a few.

The Finnish CFC legislation implies that a Finnish company may be subject to income tax for its share of the profit of a CFC regardless of whether these profits are distributed by the CFC to its shareholders or not. A CFC is defined as a foreign corporation owned and controlled by a Finnish tax resident that pays income tax in its domicile at a rate less than 60% of the Finnish corporate income tax rate.

The Finnish Supreme Administrative Court decided on 7 March 2011 (KHO 2011:21) to request for a preliminary ruling from the Court of Justice of the European Union (ECJ) concerning the question whether a Finnish parent company may deduct the final tax losses of its Swedish subsidiary after a cross-border merger.