Hear from Hugh de Kretser

On 2 August 2022, the Aged Care and Other Legislation Amendment (Royal Commission Response) Bill 2022 was passed (Aged Care Bill), introducing important regulatory changes to Australia’s aged care sector. The Bill makes numerous legislative amendments, including to the Aged Care Act 1997 (Cth) (Aged Care Act) and the Aged Care (Transitional Provisions) Act 1997 (Cth) (Transitional Provisions Act), and responds to various recommendations made by the Royal Commission into Aged Care Quality and Safety (Royal Commission) Final Report (Report). The Report identified the provision of substandard aged care services and perceived systemic failures in the aged care sector.[1]

The Federal Court has refused an application to stay proceedings to quantify compensation for patent infringement (quantum proceedings) pending the outcome of separate parallel proceedings challenging the validity of the infringed patent on new grounds. The case is significant as intellectual property cases are regularly bifurcated with liability determined separately damages or an account of profits. A patentee may also bring consecutive infringement cases and therefore have two separate cases considering invalidity issues for the same patent running in parallel.

Since the introduction of a nationwide Marketing Authorization Holder (MAH) system in 2019, licenses have linked directly to therapeutic products rather than manufacturers.