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In the recent case of Paul Nduba v Hon Attorney General and The Anti-Counterfeit Agency, a Kenyan court ruled that the provisions of the Kenyan Anti-Counterfeit Act (ACA) are constitutional. The facts were that the Anti-Counterfeit Agency had conducted a raid on a shop and seized what it believed was counterfeit clothing. Brands involved included Puma, Nike, Adidas and Jeep. The shop owner was present during the raid, the goods seized were itemised, and the shop owner signed an inventory. The shop owner then went to court to challenge the legality of the search and seizure.

From January 1 this year, the Korean Patent Court became the exclusive appellate court for IP related cases (see February issue). After this change, the Patent Court released some guidelines on the rules and procedures applicable to IP cases. The most recent is the "Guideline of Civil Practice and Procedure of the Patent Court of Korea" (the Guideline), which was published in English and Japanese.

Vietnam, like many other countries in the world, has an open policy on the registration and use of its country code top-level domain name, .vn. Accordingly, any individual or organisation, whether domestic or foreign, whether present in Vietnam or not, has the right to register and subsequently use domain names ending in .vn.

In two decisions rendered by the Romanian Trade Mark Office (TMO) in June 2016, the examiners found that two national applications depicting fictional characters were lacking distinctive character and therefore rejected their registration in Romania for the generic class headings of the goods and services in classes 7, 9, 28, 35, 37 and 42 of the International Nice Classification.

October 4 2016 marked a new milestone for the IP arena in Singapore and India, as Singapore's Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong and India's Prime Minister Narendra Modi witnessed the signing of a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) between the Intellectual Property Office of Singapore (IPOS) and the Department of Industrial Policy & Promotion (DIPP) of India. The signing was one of the highlights of the Singapore leader's October visit to New Delhi. This agreement aims to promote creativity, innovation and technological growth in both countries, while expanding bilateral collaboration activities in IP rights, including patents, trade marks and industrial designs.

The latest article in our series by the MARQUES IP Outer Borders Team looks at the localism trend and its implications for brands. By Kate Swaine, Mary Jane Lemenchick, Laetitia Lagarde and Thomas Raab

Utynam reports from the AIPLA Annual Meeting, held in Washington DC in October

In Trader Joe's Company v Michael Norman Hallatt d/b/a Pirate Joe's, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals issued a decision which granted Trader Joe's the right to pursue claims for trade mark infringement under the Lanham Act against activity that occurred in Canada.

In case of a patent infringement, the patentee normally has an interest not only in obtaining damages from the infringer, but also that the infringer immediately stops the infringing action. A request for an injunctive relief against the infringer is therefore standard practice in patent litigation. In such a situation the infringer may have an interest in being granted a grace period in order to gain time to find a bypass solution or to deplete his stock of infringing products. Such a grace period for the infringer, known from copyright or competition law cases, has also been discussed in patent law literature as an exceptional measure. It may be granted by a court if an immediate cessation of sales of the infringing product were to lead to disproportionate disadvantages for the infringer. Granting such a grace period requires reflecting the overall circumstances of the individual case, and such a limited continuation of the infringing action must not cause unacceptable adverse effects on the infringed party.

The well-known optical retail chain Specsavers have been hitting the headlines in the UK again. This time it is not for their successful court battles with British supermarket retailer and Wal-Mart subsidiary, Asda, which set an important precedent for the protection of colour trade marks, but for filing an application with the UK Intellectual Property Office (UKIPO) to have Should've and Shouldve registered as trade marks in classes 9, 10, 16, 35, and 44.