Mr Heaton told BBC News it was a basic principle of EU law that there should be no discrimination between migrant workers and those who work in their home country.

BBC: High earners abroad may keep full child benefit

But the court relied on a basic principle of most established legal systems, that what is not specifically prohibited should be allowed, and ruled that the trademark law did not prohibit lawyers from acting as agents and that, moreover, a 1997 law governing lawyers said that they could provide any legal service, and that filing trademarks was certainly a legal service.

ECONOMIST: China's powerful bureaucrats have lost a lawsuit