HTC victorious in patent dispute

The patent dispute in the Swedish High Court of Justice between HTC Sweden, the Swedish government through the Swedish Civil Aviation Administration (LFV) and 3M’s distributor is now settled with HTC Sweden as the winner.

According to the High Court of Justice, HTC’s European patent for Twister is completely valid and HTC owns the exclusive rights to the Twister technology and its methods. According to a report published by the company, the verdict means that the High Court of Justice...

New BCC secretariat

By Steve Wright, chairman, British Cleaning Council.

The decision has been made by Council to outsource the secretariat services for the British Cleaning Council Limited when current secretary John Stinton retires at the end of June. The provider selected to take over the role is the secretariat of the Cleaning & Support Services Association (CSSA).

I would like to take this opportunity to officially thank John Stinton for his 16 year commitment as BCC’s secretary and wish him all the best in...

People - May

People News from the May 2009 edition of C&M

At the 2nd Team Clean Challenge Awards ceremony in London’s Westminster, Eddie Green of OCS was named best overall manager. In this year’s Team Clean Challenge, organised by Asset Skills, 22 teams from the private and public sector took part with specialisms ranging from office cleaning to healthcare, industrial and school cleaning. Green was praised by the competition judges for his ‘outstanding performance’, exceptional leadership, organisational...

Awards ceremony honours UK’s best cleaners

The skills and talents of the UK’s best cleaners have been recognised at an awards ceremony in central London. The entrants took part in two cleaning competitions organised by Asset Skills, the Sector Skills Council for the cleaning industry. One contest was open to industry, the other took place within prisons.

The heats in the open contest took place last year. The award for best cleaner in the 2008 Team Clean Challenge went to Annette Giblin, from Rentokil Initial at BP Hull. The joint first...

IMHX - proving its worth in the credit crunch

Quartz Publishing & Exhibitions Ltd, organisers of the UK’s leading logistics event - IMHX,  believes that the recession is helping trade shows to strengthen their position in the marketer’s toolbox.

Quartz managing director, Paul Michael, said: “As the doors closed at our other flagship exhibition, The Cleaning Show, in early March, exhibitors were delighted that - despite the gloomy economic outlook - the show had exceeded all their expectations. Most visitors were coming to the show with the...

New penalties for corporate manslaughter

Companies could be fined between 2.5% and 10% of their turnover for committing the new offence of Corporate Manslaughter. For many companies, this will mean fines of several millions of pounds and for some, fines could amount to hundreds of millions of pounds.

Potentially even more damaging is that the court may also impose a publicity order, which requires the organisation to publicise in a specified manner the fact that it has been convicted of the offence, the specified particulars of the...