Please find attached a Web link to the Ineractive Data Toolkit, following the recent launch of the detailed Data Maps by the Higher Education Funding Council for England.

The initial discussions of the extremely useful HEFCE data (in the media and elsewhere) appears to be focused on the identification of geographical ‘Cold Spots’ in educational provision generally, for students of all ages.

However, with creative use of the data and an imaginative strategy, Universities acting as ‘Anchor Institutions’ in localities will become educational, cultural and economic ‘Hotspots’. Well that’s the general idea. It is recommended by HEFCE that the Data and Interactive Data Toolkit should be actively used by all interested faculties in the universities. In most Universities that means a considerable number of teams and departments should be using this new Toolkit.

The Link to HEFCE:

http://www.hefce.ac.uk/news/newsarchive/2014/news88533.html

A recent High Court decision, (Richmond Pharmacology v Chester Overseas Ltd (et al.) [2014] EWHC 2692) involving Director duties under sections 172 and 175 of the Companies Act 2006, has also come to a fairly startling underlying conclusion, as to whether disclosure of confidential information to potential interested third party purchasers (even where third parties enter into non-disclosure agreements to preserve the primary confidences) could still amount to breach of confidence on the part of the primary party bound in confidence. The ordinary meaning of an obligation on each party to treat information as ‘strictly confidential all commercially sensitive information’, means exactly what it says on the tin; and that it may not be disclosed to anyone else. As Counsel in the case warned, in such transactions, the right to sell shares or other property to interested third parties would prove ‘entirely illusory’.

Please find attached a link to Mark Anderson’s IP Draughts Blog which explores the strictness of the conclusions in this case, and offers possible solutions in his Comments section.

IP Draughts Blog:

Disclosing business secrets to share purchasers

The decision in Richmond Pharmacology:

http://www.bailii.org/cgi-bin/markup.cgi?doc=/ew/cases/EWHC/Ch/2014/2692.html&query=richmond+and+pharmacology&method=boolean