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The Intellectual Property Office of Singapore (IPOS) announced last month that the fees for patent search and examination reports and for trade mark applications will be reduced effective April 1 2017.

The tension in the relationship between patent rights and plant breeder's rights (PBR) is widely known. Recently, some EU member states have opposed the decision taken by the Enlarged Board of Appeals of the European Patent Office (EPO) in cases G2/12 and G2/13 .

On December 26 2016, the Standing Committee of the National People's Congress (NPC) issued the first draft of China's first Ecommerce Law, with an invitation for public comment within 30 days.

Both parties in this case produce and commercialise ticket and entry systems for skiing areas, stadiums and similar establishments and have the same customer circles. The plaintiff additionally runs server installations for internet use by its customers, who use its systems to store clients' data. This data is protected by a login requiring a username and password. The data can be read in the form of reports, for example concerning names and addresses of buyers of tickets. The same is possible on a server of a larger customer on which the plaintiff runs that application for the customer. These reports were routinely stored on caches as intermediate storage media.

In Opke Ireland Global Holdings Ltd v European Union Intellectual Property Office (EUIPO) the General Court (case T-88/16) upheld the Board of Appeal´s decision (case R 2387/2014-5) finding likelihood of confusion between pharmaceutical marks in class 5 according to Article 8 (1) (b) European Union Trade Mark Regulation 207/2009 (EUTMR), namely between the attacked EU mark application, word Alpharen, and the older national Lithuanian and Latvian trade marks, word Alpha D 3. In doing so, the Court had the opportunity to also deal with some procedural regulation rules not which are not commonly adjudicated on.

A Dutch court issued decisions in two court actions that illustrate the remedies that are available from the Dutch courts in cases of contributory infringement. The court found that it had jurisdiction to issue a preliminary injunction on offering and supplying a contributorily infringing product inside and outside the Netherlands, also against a non-Dutch party. The patent acts throughout Europe were essentially identical on contributory infringement. However, the court held that patent law excluded an injunction on holding a contributorily infringing product in stock.

In a first for Australia, our courts have ordered ISPs to block the websites of a number of torrenting sites. In Roadshow Films Pty Ltd v Telstra Corporation Ltd [2016] FCA 1503, Justice Nicholas ordered a collection of ISPs to block the websites of a number of well-known bittorrenting sites. The sites included in the blocking order are The Pirate Bay, Torrentz, TorrentHound, IsoHunt and SolarMovie.

In accordance with Article 4bis (1) of the Protocol Relating to the Madrid Agreement Concerning the International Registration of Marks, a national registration can be replaced by its posterior international trade mark registration. This provision concerns the situation where a trade mark that is subject of a national registration is also subject of an international registration designating the same country and applies when both registrations stand in the name of the same person and cover identical goods or services.

As explained in previous briefings, the new Civil and Commercial Code includes a series of rules referring, either directly or indirectly, to intellectual and industrial property matters which we have already reviewed in detail.

As part of the organisational reform of the Boards of Appeal of the EPO, aiming at safeguarding their independence, it has been decided to move the Boards to a new location in Haar, some 10 km east of Munich city centre. The relocation will happen in the summer of 2017. While it has not been officially communicated if oral proceedings in appeal cases will take place in Haar in the future, a review of summons for appeal hearings in the fall of 2017 indicates that, at least for the time being, the EPO's current Isar building site remains the venue for oral proceedings in appeal cases.