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As Europe prepares for a community patent court, little attention has been paid to the implications for patent-related cases. Bruno Vandermeulen and Virginie Pissoort of Bird & Bird examine the pitfalls of an over-specialized litigation system

Bill Bennett and Anthony Selleck analyze recent proposals designed to strengthen patent protection in Australia, and ask what benefits the changes will bring to applicants.

Interview: Frank Hellwig, Anheuser-Busch James Nurton speaks to Anheuser-Busch’s head of IP about victory in Russia and the battle for the Bud mark

A recent dispute in Vietnam has examined how royalties are set and compensation calculated for copyright infringement. Nguyen Hoan Thanh and Pham Thanh Tra say it is a case which is likely to have repercussions for many years

Dene Yeaman and Dan Ryan argue that China’s accession to the WTO presents a new opportunity to reform the country’s competition law and strengthen the legal protection of commercial reputation

The European Commission has ordered the US company IMS Health to license its copyrighted health data to its competitors. Dieter Paemen and Christopher Norall examine the controversial decision in the context of European competition law

The month in words

US courtrooms are becoming temples to technology as litigators use videos, CD-ROMs and e-mail to argue their case. Ingrid Hering reports

August 22 2001 is the date of implementation in Poland of a new law - The Industrial Property Law. The main aim of this Law is to adapt the Polish legal system to European Union standards.

Michiel Rijskijk Will the international exhaustion rule be applicable in Europe in the near future, just as The Netherlands, Denmark and Sweden knew it a long time ago in their respective trade mark laws? What could the consequences thereof be for industry, specifically the pharmaceutical industry? Case law in The Netherlands at the end of the 1950s provides that when goods protected by a trade mark have been brought on the market with the consent of the proprietor, the trade mark right in respect of that product is exhausted. This international exhaustion rule is also included in the Benelux Trade Mark Act of 1971. Under the influence of industry lobbying inter alia more voices were raised in the 1960s and 1970s demanding that the European market should be protected against parallel imports. The European Court of Justice on October 31 1971 in the Centrafarm Winthrop case (C-16/74) for the first time ruled that the proprietor of a trade mark is not permitted to prohibit a product being brought onto the market in one EEC member state if it was brought on the market in another EEC member state with the consent of the proprietor.