The Legal 500

Legal Developments in Belgium

• ALTIUS reinforces Real Estate & Regulatory team with new Partner

  ALTIUS is proud to announce that Lieven Peeters joined the firm as a Partner on 15 February 2010. Lieven joins ALTIUS from Linklaters where he started his career 13 years ago. He will considerably strengthen ALTIUS’ Real Estate & Regulatory department and the firm’s overall position on the Belgian market.
  - ALTIUS (in cooperation with Tiberghien)

• ALTIUS REINFORCES REAL ESTATE PRACTICE WITH NEW PARTNER

  A significant hire from an international firm positions Brussels based ALTIUS as one of the leading independent real estate practices in Belgium.
  - ALTIUS (in cooperation with Tiberghien)

• Plant variety rights in the distribution chain

  Under the system of plant breeders rights, also known as plant variety rights, the breeder of a new variety can obtain an exclusive right to perform certain acts with respect to material [1] of his protected variety. This exclusive right comes in the form of a certificate which is granted by a body mandated to do so,[2] provided that the variety meets the grant criteria laid down in the law. Upon grant of the certificate, and sometimes ever even before, only the breeder of the protected variety[3] is entitled to (re)produce material from the variety, condition it for the purpose of propagation, offer it for sale, sell it or otherwise put it to market, export it, import it, or stock it for any of these purposes. Subject to a number of exceptions and unless authorization from the breeder is obtained, these acts are thus reserved for the breeder of the protected variety. They are referred to as the ‘reserved acts’.
  - ALTIUS (in cooperation with Tiberghien)

• Le contentieux de la propriété intellectuelle, nouvelle mouture: un premier bilan

  La transposition en droit belge, courant 2007, de la Directive européenne 2004/48 sur la mise en œuvre des droits de propriété intellectuelle offrit l'occasion au législateur de revoir et d'harmoniser les procédures relatives au contentieux de la propriété intellectuelle. Deux ans après son entée en vigueur, il est possible de dresser un premier bilan de la réforme. Assurément positif.
  - ALTIUS (in cooperation with Tiberghien)

• Social security agreement between India and Belgium

  On 1 September 2009, the long-anticipated Social Security Agreement between the Kingdom of Belgium and the Republic of India (the “SSA”) entered into force. The SSA was signed in New Delhi on 3 November 2006 and is considered as a landmark agreement as it was the first treaty of its kind to be signed by the Indian authorities. Therefore it is likely to serve as a benchmark for similar agreements between India and other countries.
  - ALTIUS (in cooperation with Tiberghien)

• Five pitfalls to avoid in your Belgian contracting agreements

  In Belgium, contracting agreements are subject to the Belgian Civil Code (‘BCC’) plus several other regulations. In this article, we briefly discuss five rules which foreign investors or principals may be surprised apply to Belgian contracting agreements. Make sure you avoid these pitfalls!
  - ALTIUS (in cooperation with Tiberghien)

• ECJ holds that a single award procedure is sufficient for IPPPs

  The Acoset judgment of the ECJ dated 15 October 2009 (C-196/08) was related to a dispute about an institutionalised public-private partnership (IPPP). A local authority wanted to grant a concession to a newly-created semi-public company, whose minority shareholder would be a private company selected by an open tender procedure. The minority shareholder would be responsible for the operations of the semi-public company.
  - ALTIUS (in cooperation with Tiberghien)

• Belgian Procurement Law becomes more compliant

  On 23 April 2009, the ECJ held that Belgium did not properly transpose Procurement Directive 2004/18 into national law (case C-292/07). In fact, Belgium already has new procurement Acts (dating from 15 and 16 June 2006) but they have not entered into force, because the new Royal Decrees implementing these Acts have not been adopted. Therefore, Belgium decided to modify the old Royal Decrees (from 1996). This article will analyse two topics: the negotiated procedure and the procedure for handling abnormally low offers.
  - ALTIUS (in cooperation with Tiberghien)

• The ECJ Sea Judgement: Some further guidance on the “in house” exemption

  In its Sea Judgement of 10 September 2009 (C-573/07), the European Court of Justice (ECJ) further clarifies its “in-house” jurisprudence. More specifically, it goes more deeply into the notion of control. Indeed, following the landmark judgement in the Teckal case, contracting authorities granting a public contract do not have to apply the public procurement rules if the contractor, which is a distinct legal entity, is subject to the same control by the contracting authority as the departments of the contracting authority and if the contractor carries out the essential part of its activities with the controlling local authority or authorities.
  - ALTIUS (in cooperation with Tiberghien)

• When does a continuous fault become a serious cause justifying dismissal?

  The Belgian Supreme Court recently annulled a judgment of the Labour Law Court of Bergen because a judgment it had handed down denied the right of the employer (in this case: an administrator of a hospital) to determine himself when a continuous misconduct makes the professional cooperation immediately and definitively impossible – and consequently justifies a dismissal for serious cause.
  - Claeys & Engels, member of Ius Laboris