Search results for

In Alliance Property Group v Alliance Group (March 14 2011), the South African Supreme Court of Appeal upheld an appeal from Alliance Property Group, ruling that Alliance Group Limited was passing its business off as being associated with that of Alliance Property Group.

Maastricht University is to host a roundtable discussion on IP rights, standards and innovation next month

WIPO has written a letter to Icann advising it against revising the UDRP.

Icann visited Interpol's general secretariat headquarters in Lyon, France this week for the first time.

The Belgian Court of Appeal has told Google that it infringes publishers' copyright by reproducing their headlines. The ruling confirms a 2007 first instance decision that supported the claims of Copiepresse, which represents French-language newspapers in Belgium. It claimed the way Google News reproduces headlines and article extracts in order to create a search engine for news infringed its copyright. Google claimed the system produced large benefits for the publishers and could be opted out of. The decision underlines the uncertainty around the interpretation of copyright around Europe. In January last year a Paris court ruled that Google did not break its copyright laws by reproducing thumbnail images of visual works. Other countries have followed similar interpretations of copyright. Google is likely to appeal to the Cour de Cassation in Belgium, the country's highest court and may then seek to refer the case to the Court of Justice of the EU.

Austria is one the countries which offers protection for technical inventions not only via patents but also utility models. When the Austrian legislator enacted the first Utility Model Act in 1994 he commented that the requirement of inventiveness for utility models was lower than that for patents.

One of the fields where science has made the greatest progress in the past few decades is biotechnology, and it is precisely in the area of biotechnological patents, and especially those related to microorganisms, where the Argentine Republic faces one important challenge.

The comment period for the latest draft of Icann's draft Applicant Guidebook for new generic top-level domains ended in May, one month after the draft was released. The 58 organisations to have sent in comments included INTA, MARQUES, WIPO, News Corporation, IBM, Time Warner and Microsoft.

Admittedly, there has been a lot of water under the bridge since 1994, when Law 2239/1994 on Trademarks was enacted in Greece. More importantly, the need for a new law that could more efficiently deal with trade mark matters was growing. Recently, a Bill on Trademarks was introduced with some important amendments in this respect.

Recently, the Australian courts found that use of a trade mark on a global website amounted to use in Australia. In International Hair Cosmetics Group Pty Ltd v International Hair Cosmetics Limited, the Australian Federal Court addressed the issue of whether use of a trade mark on a UK-based website that included Australia as one option in a drop-down box amounted to Australian use.