Telegram is a powerful tool for end-to-end encrypted communication and one of the most popular messenger apps in Russia. However, one aspect often evades public attention: Telegram is swamped with bots which gather and disseminate personal data. 

Recently there has been a strong wave of anti-China sentiments expressed in the media and within certain political circles, both in the United States and within the European Union. The Netherlands has been no exception to this.

The implementation of the Unitary Patent Package will represent the result of the evolution towards the unification of the European patent system.

The Nutri-Score has been officially endorsed in France, Germany, Belgium, the Netherlands, Luxembourg, and Spain and in other European countries they have been voluntarily used by large, private retail corporate groups. Given its underlying aim of helping curbing obesity and nutritious calory intake, Nutri-Score may be classified as a health nudge and one offering great potential for the health policy toolkit: as compared to traditional regulation, nudges are low-cost interventions which generate less resistance from consumers.

Could you estimate how much time of your day you spend on social media? The answer would most likely be something along the lines of ‘a lot’ or ‘I’m always connected, so I get notifications all the time anyways’ but an actual estimate, that’s a very tough guess to take. However, for most people, it is indeed a very high amount of time. Given that we spend an incredible amount of time on various social media platforms, it cannot be denied that the content we are exposed to for so many hours in a given day has an incredible impact on us. While, for a lot of people the good might outweigh the bad, others are prone to be severely damaged by the use and content on their social media accounts.

On 4 March 2021, Italy decided to block a shipment of the Oxford/AstraZeneca Covid-19 vaccine that was destined for Australia. This remarkable move, notably made in response to AstraZeneca’s delay in providing the agreed doses of vaccines by the set deadlines, is the first of its kind since the Union introduced rules concerning the possibilities to limit exports of vaccines outside of the EU.

Plant varieties are difficult to make but easy to reproduce. Proving that someone reproduced a plant variety, however, is extremely hard. For organized crime, infringing plant variety rights therefore presents low-hanging fruit, with consequences far beyond the infringement of IP rights. 

Historical novels offer a place to outreach for other legal systems, providing laboratories to study and understand law and society. There is especial value in revisiting historical novels that depict law and society, especially in these days of Covid-19. Such is the case of the novel by Daniel Defoe, entitled A Journal of the Plague Year (hereinafter, the Journal), published in 1722. The law is omnipresent in the Journal. Looking at the Journal reveals that resilience is a characteristic of law and society when facing extreme challenges, such as Covid-19 or the 1665 bubonic plague. After all, law and society have an impressive ability to adapt to change.

One view on social media communication is that platforms should remove content deemed to be inappropriate or disturbing and suspend users who have repeatedly violated the Community Guidelines and should do so in a consistent and coherent manner. A contrasting view is that users can share what they want, and platforms should solely act as transmission agents without assessing and restricting the content. But where exactly do platforms stand on content moderation and what do their sanctions reveal about it?

The topic of AI-generated inventions requires preliminary clarifications: what do we mean with AI? What is the meaning of AI-generated inventions?