Krishnamurthy and Co

Introduction: The Consumer Protection Act, 2019 (“Act of 2019”), is a pivotal legislation aimed at safeguarding consumer rights against unfair trade practices and substandard goods or services.

The Reserve Bank of India (“RBI”) over the years has raised concerns over measures for resolution of stressed assets.

In recent years, stakeholders have started viewing ESG to be a value driver rather than just another compliance requirement. Consequently, there is greater attention to ESG considerations in M&A transactions.

The bedrock of modern-day commerce and trade is based, inter alia, on the relationship between contracting parties, which is governed by the principles of the law of contracts. Technological advancement and globalisation have fostered additional complexities in this sphere, making it incumbent on the parties to protect their legitimate business interests. In a bid to preserve and protect interests such as confidential and proprietary information, ideas and trade secrets, contracting parties often feel the need to include restrictive covenants, impeding the other party from exercising its liberty to use any confidential information or carry out a specific profession, trade or business with any other parties without seeking prior permission from the contracting party. Such restrictive or negative covenants can be of various kinds and include, without limitation, non-compete, non-solicitation and confidentiality clauses.

WHAT IS AN NFT? The term NFT stands for “non-fungible token”. NFTs are essentially digitalised assets which represent underlying works (as defined under section 2(y) of the Copyright Act, 1957 and hereinafter referred to as “Work/s”) such as art, memes, gifs, music and could even include shoes and clothes.

Software, core of technological innovations, is considered to be the driving force with respect to current developments across sectors such as automobile, healthcare, manufacturing, networking, telecom, etc. In addition, software programs have helped in developing cutting edge technologies, such as artificial intelligence, machine learning, Internet of Things (IOT), blockchain and cognitive computing. Albeit all this development, protection for software programs or Computer Related Inventions (CRI) requires to be examined.

The Company Law Committee (‘CLC’) released its report on March 21, 2022 where the committee has recommended potential amendments to various provisions of the Companies Act, 2013 (‘Act’). The report of 2022 contemplates a significant overhaul of the Act by easing compliance burdens, recognizing / introducing various concepts (such as fractional shares, restricted stock units, stock appreciation rights) and clarifying certain ambiguities in the present Act. A few key highlights of the CLC recommendations are provided below:

(A) INTRODUCTION The “Housing for All Mission 2022” is certainly a challenge, requiring assistance from all quarters and a holistic outlook and approach to address the complex issues prevalent within the real estate industry in India. One of the concepts which has emerged as a catalyst to achieve the objectives is the idea of “Integrated Townships”. An Integrated Township is a ‘city within a city’, which is a combined cluster of housing facilities, commercial business, education, and health-care facilities with corresponding physical infrastructure facilities viz. water supply, sewage disposal facilities, roads, and power supply. The development of core and allied infrastructure facilities forms an integral part of township development. Integrated Townships are well-defined and well-designed residential, commercial, retail and recreational areas having their own integrated waste management systems, water resource management and other amenities in place. The State Governments of Gujarat, Karnataka, Uttar Pradesh and Maharashtra, finding merit in the idea have adopted the integrated townships concept by forming their own state policies. In this article, we shall examine briefly the regulations and concessions introduced within the State of Maharashtra to promote the construction of integrated townships within the State.