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A new Patents Order, 2011 has come into force in Brunei Darussalam, effective January 1 2012. This legislation repeals the previous patent legislation: The Inventions Act, Chapter 72.

The Greek Patent Office recently introduced procedures to facilitate the quicker issuance of a search report for national applications, which are intended to establish priority rights for a later EPO or PCT application.

In France, when an employee of a company makes an invention, ownership depends on his employment contract. Generally, the contract contains a clause stating that the employee has an inventive role and that inventions resulting from his work belong to the company. In return, according to French law, the company must pay additional remuneration to the employee for each of its inventions.

In a much-awaited decision and probably the first of its kind in India, in the case of Natco v Bayer, the Office of the Controller General of the Indian Patent Office issued a compulsory licence in favour on Natco. Natco now has a non-exclusive and non-assignable licence to Bayer's Indian Patent 215758, for making, using, selling and offering to sell (not importing) the generic version of Nexavar (sorafenib tosylate) within India, for the treatment of kidney and liver cancer. Interestingly, the entire proceeding lasted less than a year and the drug in question was not a life-saving drug.

Last January 27, the Industrial Property Law was amended, with the most relevant issues relating to enforcement of IP rights entering in force on January 30.

The district court in summary proceedings recently rejected Taste of Nature's bid to ban infringement of its European Raphanus patent. The court held that there is a significant chance that the patent will be revoked, because it relates to subject matter which is excluded from patentability.

In 2006 the New Zealand Domain Name Commission, the body that administers .nz domain names, established a dispute resolution procedure.

On September 29 2008, Sanofi Pasteur, the vaccines division of Sanofi-Aventis, filed an opposition against the application by Getz Bros Philippines for the trademark Comaxin, covering pharmaceutical products for the treatment of infections in the upper and lower respiratory tract, ENT, skin and soft tissue, gut infections, osteomylitis, septcoemia, peritonitis and post-op infections in class 5. Sanofi Pasteur claimed that Getz's Comaxin mark was confusingly similar with its own Combaxim mark registered in 2007, covering pharmaceutical preparations in the form of pediatric vaccines.

According to the Norwegian domain name policy, only companies registered in the Norwegian Register of Legal Entities may register .no domain names. For foreign companies, the most common solution for fulfilling local presence requirements is to register a Norwegian branch office.

A Russian applicant filed a trade mark application on January 18 2010, in Classes 35 and 36, for a blue oval with 10 stars along the periphery and word elements Coast Line (stylised) and Real Estate in European Countries (in Cyrillics).