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The multi-member Civil Court of Athens recently issued an interesting judgment regarding the criteria when comparing composite trade marks covering pharmaceutical products and consisting of words and coloured devices. The dispute in question referred to a main lawsuit filed against a Greek company regarding infringement of the famous trademark Aspiring. The plaintiff claimed that the colour combination of green and white with black lettering is widely recognisable by consumers as an essential element of its Aspiring product marking and that this combination is associated with the plaintiff. The infringing product was a pharmaceutical product for the relief of pain, antipyretics and analgesic which circulated in the market in a packaging bearing the colours green and white with black lettering and under a different word mark.

When it comes to protecting new technologies, it may be difficult to decide between trade secret and patent protection.

Earlier this year, Singapore advanced in its quest to become an intellectual property hub in the ASEAN region with the appointment of the Intellectual Property Office of Singapore (IPOS) as an International Authority in Patent Search and Examination, specifically as an International Searching Authority (ISA), and International Preliminary Examining Authority (IPEA) under the Patent Cooperation Treaty (PCT). This marked IPOS as the first IP office to receive ISA/IPEA recognition by the World Intellectual Property Organisation (WIPO) within the ASEAN region.

This is an action (IPV 10-2009-00007) for design patent infringement and unfair competition filed by Kawasaki Heavy Industries and Kawasaki Motors (Phils) Corp against Eastworld Motor Industries Corp. In April 2008, Kawasaki released its Fury 125 motorcycle, which bore its registered industrial designs (ID 3-2008-00715 and 3-2008-00718). Kawasaki later learned that Eastworld had manufactured and was selling motorcycles branded as Sapphire 125, which Kawasaki claimed bore and incorporated nearly all of Kawasaki's registered patent elements. Eastworld, on its part, alleged that contrary to Kawasaki's claims, the industrial design for Sapphire 125 is covered by the certificate of registration number 3-2009-000062 under its name, and that Kawasaki failed to file an adverse information to its design application when it was published. Thus, there can be no infringement for using and selling its own patented products.

In Dutch court practice, an appeal is of a devolutive nature, that is in appeal the case is reconsidered as a whole. However, in a recent interlocutory decision (November 3 2015, High Point v KPN), the Appeal Court in The Hague found that the patentee was not entitled to further limit his claims.

Brand owners often wish to seek cancellation of another party's registered trade mark for a range of legitimate reasons, such as unauthorised registration of the mark by a dealer or registration of a copycat mark by a third party. These issues can cause impediments to business and should be addressed without delay.

Would you recognize the commercial origin of the illustrated chocolate bar? In 2010 Nestlé filed a trade mark application for this 3D sign but only in the United Kingdom. Its protection under trad mark law has been an obstacle course for its manufacturer ever since.

In September, in Adidas AG v Christian Fellowship Church, the Trademark Trial and Appeal Board (TTAB) issued a non-precedential, but potentially instructive, opinion in which it sustained a petition for cancellation on the grounds of non-use. The case analysed whether sales of only a small number of goods by Christian Fellowship Church constituted "use in commerce" under the Trademark Act.

In a major step towards realising the Unified Patent Court (UPC), the UK Intellectual Property Office has secured premises for the London section of the central division and the UK local division of the UPC.

On February 8 2012, the Norwegian Department of Justice proposed new legislation regarding the establishment of pledges in IP rights. The bill was introduced by the government in the form of a proposition a year later (Prop 101 L (2013–2014), and sanctioned on January 1 2015, the sanction process taking a lot longer than most IP practitioners had expected.