People: Sporting triumph for Xodus staff

Published on 28/08/2012 00:00

Staff at energy consultancy Xodus have taken part in their own version of the Olympic Games after the company committed more than £100,000 to an international sporting extravaganza.

The international firm, which is based in Aberdeen and has bases in Edinburgh and Glasgow, flew staff to the Hague in the Netherlands to take on each other at sports including athletics, basketball, beach volleyball and touch rugby.

More than a quarter of its global workforce of 450 – from as far afield as Australia, the United States and West Africa – showed off their sporting prowess at the three-day tournament.

Edinburgh-based employee Craig Dougary, who was on the organising committee, said: “It has always been a dream of the company to create something on this scale and once the decision was made to do it, we had just six months to make it a reality.”

Copyright is no laughing matter

Intellectual property lawyer Paul Motion took to the stage at the Edinburgh Fringe to argue for reform of the UK’s copyright laws.

Appearing in his own legal show for the fourth successive year, Motion – who leads Scottish law firm BTO’s technology, IP and online reputation teams – says that reform is needed to unlock “vast archives” of material that cannot be used commercially for fear of litigation by unknown copyright holders who cannot be traced.

He said: “The amount of potential source material locked away because the copyright owners aren’t known is staggering. Some 150 miles of shelved documents are held by the National Archives and National Records of Scotland, of which up to 40 per cent may be affected by this problem.”

He says there are ways of trying to trace owners, but under the current system the costs would be “astronomical”.

His talk – entitled “Is copyright past its sell by date?” – was hosted by the Edinburgh Festival Fringe Society and was aimed at artists and managers to discuss creative legal matters.

The Bard heads for Livingston outlet

The ever-growing reach of the Fringe also spread to McArthurGlen’s Livingston Designer Outlet last week, as the group used empty space at the shopping centre to stage a Shakespeare play.

Shakespeare for Breakfast, a year-on-year hit in Edinburgh now in its 21st visit to the festival, staged a one-off evening performance of its show The Only Way Is Little Venice – described as a riotous look at Romeo and Juliet.

Centre manager Karen Stewart said: “With temporary units available at the centre, there is no better way to utilise this free space than by creating something fun for shoppers to enjoy.”