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The past two years have seen some fundamental changes to patent, utility model and design law in Russia. Eugene Arievich and Yuri Pylnev review how they are working in practice

European countries scored well in the latest Global IP Index, published by law firm Taylor Wessing, but the United States plunged to 24th place. That is in stark contrast to another index of IP regimes, published by the Global IP Center in February this year

Managing IP answers your questions about the impact of Brexit on IP

Social media such as Skype, Facebook and internet message boards can be used to serve court papers in Singapore, the High Court ruled in Storey, David Ian Andrew v Planet Arkadia

According to Article L615-1 paragraph 3 of the French IP Code, the offering for sale or putting on the market of an infringing product, where such acts are committed by a person other than the manufacturer of the infringing product (so-called indirect infringement), only imply the liability of the person committing these acts if they were committed knowingly.

On June 1 2016, the proposed amendment to the Mexican Industrial Property Law (IPL) was published in the Federal Government Gazette, containing several modifications relating to the inclusion of provisions on opposition rights to third parties within trade mark application procedures before the Mexican Institute of Industrial Property (IMPI).

In 2012 the European Commission set up an Expert Group to advise the Commission with respect to the relation between IP and Directive 98/44/EC on the legal protection of biotechnological inventions. This directive is also known as the Biotech Directive.

While SPCs can be granted for medicinal products in accordance with Regulation (EC) No 469/2009, it has been questioned whether medical devices that are also subject to a lengthy product approval process similar to medicinal products could be eligible for SPC protection in the absence of an explicit Regulation in this respect. In the past, the German Federal Patent Court (Bundespatentgericht or BPatG) adopted a relatively liberal approach in deciding that SPCs for an implantable medical device comprising a pharmaceutically active substance are allowable (14 W (pat) 12/07). A recent case may signal that the German Federal Patent Court may apply a stricter approach in the future.

The Directive (EU) 2015/2436 of the European Parliament and of the Council of December 16 2015 to approximate the laws of the Member States relating to trade marks was published in the Official Journal on December 23 2015 and entered into force on the 20th day following its publication date. Most of its provisions shall thus be implemented in national laws within a three-year deadline, that is by January 14 2019.

In The Netherlands there are two theories concerning the scope of protection of designs with technical features, more specifically the scope of protection of their technical elements. The first one is the so-called apparaat gerichteleer (apparatus-focused doctrine). According to this theory, every design element of a product which is technical or functional should be excluded from design protection. The other one is the so-called resultaat gerichteleer (result-focused doctrine). This theory holds that design protection of technical or functional elements of a product is possible as long as there are alternative technical or functional elements at hand to achieve the same result.