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The America Invents Act (AIA) of 2011 introduced a number of changes to the US patent system, including significantly increasing the options available for challenging the validity of a granted patent. Among these options it is the process of post grant review, a trial proceeding at the new Patent Trial and Appeal Board, which holds the most in common with opposition before the European Patent Office.

On September 29 2015, the Philippines deposited its instrument of accession to the Nagoya Protocol on Access to Genetic Resources and the Fair and Equitable Sharing of Benefits Arising from their Utilization to the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) which entered into force on December 28 2015. The Protocol is a supplementary agreement to the 1992 CBD, and the latter's instrument for the implementation of its third objective, the fair and equitable sharing of benefits arising from the utilization of genetic resources with the end view of contributing to the conservation of biological diversity and sustainable development and human well-being.

Of the total population of the Netherlands of 16.8 million people, 2.2 million have seen the final episode of the second season of "Heel Holland bakt". This makes it one of the most popular television shows in the Netherlands of the past few years.

IP enforcement in Vietnam saw continued development in the past year. As we have reported previously, 2014 saw several breakthrough cases in patent infringement, domain name dispute resolution and other areas. In 2015, the law continued to evolve as more and more complex questions arose.

The concept of establishing trade mark use plays a central role in brand protection. In addition to forming one of the requirements in trade mark infringement actions, establishing trade mark use mitigates the risk of expungement proceedings due to non-use.

The TIPO's accelerated examination programme (AEP) has been in operation for over six years since the launch of its pilot version in 2009. According to a statistics report of the TIPO, by the end of November 2015, the conditions for requesting AEP and the average corresponding examination time are as follows:

A US company MD Science Lab filed a trade mark application number 2012718142 for Swiss Navy in respect of goods in class 5 (pharmaceuticals). The patent office refused the registration because the claimed designation includes the word element Swiss. In the opinion of the patent office the word "swiss" would be confusing with regard to the location of the applicant and place of production of goods because the applicant is a US resident. For the sake of justice it should be noted that not so many Russians would understand that this Latin word combination means.

2015 was an eventful year for the IP regime in Singapore. Many IP milestone events occurred in 2015, especially in the patents sector. The accessibility, interoperability and quality of the IP landscape in Singapore can be seen in this summary of important 2015 events.

Myanmar's general election, which took place on November 8, was the first nationwide vote since the military junta's dissolution in 2011. It was also the first poll contested by opposition party the National League for Democracy (NLD) in 25 years. Rapid economic reforms since 2011 have resulted in enormous growth opportunities. With the NLD winning a sweeping majority in both houses of parliament, the country now enters a transitional phase with the quasi-civilian government gradually transferring power to the NLD.

2015 was the year when Scandinavia took two major steps towards full harmonisation of validation formalities in Sweden, Finland, Denmark and Norway regarding translation requirements and payment of fixed fees rather than fees depending on the number of pages of a validated patent.