Expert Analysis

Registering part of your brand name separately can protect a range of new products, but registering it will not be easy. Mike Lynd gives his advice

Recent unrest is unlikely to halt the long-term development of markets in north Africa. Edward Hardcastle and Nadeen Helou provide a guide to enforcing trade mark rights

Australia’s pro-competition policy is the best place to start when trying to predict how courts will respond to parallel import cases of trade mark infringement, says Joanne Martin. The same applies to the US, UK and China

Peter J Kinsella identifies five of the most commonly overlooked issues in IP licensing agreements

Descriptive marks can be great for marketing a product, but difficult to defend and enforce. Bonita Trimmer argues that a series of cases in Europe is making that a little bit easier

After attracting headlines for good and bad reasons in 2009, China’s IP system had a quieter 2010. There was no litigation to rival that of Chint v Schneider and no new legislation to match the third amendment to the Patent Law. The implementing regulations for that amendment have so far caused few problems for patent owners. Worries about the length of time it would take SIPO to do a secrecy examination for foreign filings have so far proved unfounded, with a response time of two to three weeks being the norm. Companies doing R&D in China remain concerned about how the inventor remuneration policies will be interpreted by the courts, but no cases have emerged of yet. IP practitioners are still waiting for the first case to test the IP provisions of the Anti-Monopoly Law.