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MEPs and member states are considering a new solution to break the impasse over whether the Court of Justice of the EU should have the final say on how the law on the unitary patent is interpreted, EU Commission official Kerstin Jorna has said

Not many patent cases have caused so much uproar as the 'broccoli' and 'tomato' cases that were decided last year by the Enlarged Board of Appeal of the EPO. Recently, the European Parliament has interfered by issuing a resolution on the patenting of essential biological processes. In this resolution, the Parliament says that patent laws should not prevent breeders from using a protected plant for further breeding activities, similar to the regulation in the UPOV convention.

New Zealand's chief High Court judge recently re-affirmed the courts' disapproval of fishing expeditions by parties during discovery. The decision also highlighted the difficulties of suing only the contributory infringer in proceedings for infringement of process or use style claims.

A new act governing the Norwegian Industrial Property Office will come into force from January 1 2013. The act provides changes for the organisation of the Board of Appeal, oral procedures and the possibility to award legal costs during administrative review.

According to Polish law the right of protection for a trade mark lapses on failure to put it to genuine use for the goods covered by the registration for a period during five successive years, unless serious reasons of non-use exist. Preparations for the use of the trade mark are not sufficient and the five-year period begins the day after a decision on granting protection rights is issued, in case the owner has not used the trade mark, or if the trade mark had been in use, on the date its genuine use was abandoned.

On April 25 2012 the President of the Philippines, Benigno Aquino III, signed the Instrument of Accession of the Philippines to the Madrid Protocol, which is expected to take effect in the Philippines on July 25 2012. Prior to this date, the Intellectual Property Office (IPOPHL) prepared for the accession by improving its trade mark registration processing time, and meeting with various stakeholders to explain the system, and obtain reactions to it.

An applicant recently filed a trade mark application for Библейский Хлеб (Biblical Bread) in Cyrrilic. The Patent Office rejected the application, the decision was appealed at the Chamber of Patent Disputes and the Chamber sided with the examiner of the Patent Office. One of the reasons for rejection was that the designation Библейский Хлеб indicates a certain product and the composition of the product used by many bakeries in Russia. The decision of the Chamber also explained that the claimed designation has a marked religious connotation. The Bible is a sacred book and the use of the associated word for marking any goods may mean that consumers think those goods are produced by persons who have a direct connection to some religion.

Article 10.2 of the Taiwan Fair Trade Act stipulates that no monopolistic enterprise can improperly set, maintain or change the price for goods or the remuneration for services. If a royalty agreement is deemed a violation of that article by the Supreme Administrative Court in a dispute, does the agreement still have legal effect?

Two decisions by the newly established Swiss Federal Patent Court have made clear the Court's position that a plaintiff's request for a cease-and-desist order shall not consist of the wording of the patent claim. The Court confirms the view of the Swiss Federal Court that the subject matter of the infringing procedure is the question of whether the defendant's product with its specific structural or method details uses the claimed technical teaching of the patent.

In the eyes of the law, a company is a separate legal entity from its members and directors. The acts of a company, including any wrongful acts are attributable to, and liability therefore rests with, the company as a separate entity and not with its members or directors. This principle from the Salomon case, that there is a "corporate veil" between a company itself and its members or directors, is a well-entrenched principle of company law and the Malaysian courts are bound to abide by it unless there are cogent reasons to depart from it.