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Companies large and small are filing more and more trade mark applications in China to support product launches. But even companies without immediate plans to sell in China are filing more due to the risks posed by registry pirates including the possibility they will use pirated registrations to interfere with production and export from China by against their Chinese suppliers.

Several judgments have been rendered on the scope of granting registration of patent term extension (PTE). Now a judgment regarding the scope of the extended patent right has been rendered for the first time.

Many foreign trade mark owners rely heavily on their local distributors to get their products distributed in the Indonesian market and sometimes place too much trust in them considering the local distributors' local knowledge of the market. Consequently, some unfortunate cases can occur where the distributors take advantages of the rightful trade mark owner's lack of protection and seek the registration of the trade mark in their own names, without obtaining the trade mark owner's consent. This is done in the hope that once the distributorship ends, the existing registrations may serve as their leverage in seeking opportunities to continue selling.

In a lengthy report, the Australian Productivity Commission has recommended significant curtailment of the rights of IP holders in Australia.

The seven-year veil of secrecy was lifted from the details of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) shortly before it was signed earlier this year. The TPP is a trade agreement among Australia, Brunei, Canada, Chile, Japan, Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, Peru, Singapore, the United States and Vietnam. Its stated goal is "to promote economic growth; support the creation and retention of jobs; enhance innovation, productivity and competitiveness; raise living standards; reduce poverty in our countries; and promote transparency, good governance, and enhance labor and environmental protections".

In this case, the plaintiff has produced since 1989 the well-known TV-series The Simpsons which has been shown in German-speaking countries since mid-1994 and in which beer under the fictitious name Duff is consumed. The producer owns EU trade mark number 8351091 for the word Duff for beer (application date June 9 2009 and registered on March 26 2014).

Recently, in Omega SA v Alpha Phi Omega, the Trademark Trial and Appeal Board (TTAB) issued a precedential decision which provided clarification concerning at what point in time a plaintiff must establish fame of its mark in order to support a claim of dilution by blurring in a TTAB proceeding. The case is significant because it may affect the ability of a prospective plaintiff to succeed on a claim of dilution by blurring in an opposition or cancellation proceeding.

The appeal board of the patent office examined an appeal against refusal of registration of the trade mark Svenska Handelsbanken on IR number 1107500 filed by the Swedish company Svenska Handelsbanken АВ (publ) in respect of services in classes 35, 36, 45.

Three years ago, Korea adopted a new patent term adjustment (PTA) system. As many readers know, PTA is a system that allows extension of a patent term to the patent owner to compensate for an unreasonable delay during the prosecution phase.

The Internet of Things (IoT) is gaining in momentum and the expected growth is paramount both in terms of the number of connected devices and regarding the size of the potential business.