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Taiwan Trademark Law has a post-registration opposition system, allowing any third party to file an opposition action against a registered trade mark during the three months after registration. Once the mark is revoked, the mark is deemed not to have been registered ab initio. Also according to the law, the Trademark Office may, ex officio or upon request, cancel a registered trade mark if the mark has not been put to use or its use has discontinued for three years without a justifiable reason.

The Cantonal Court of Zug recently rejected a request of a copyright owner for a provisional injunction prohibiting the sale of second-hand software specimens.

Thailand follows the first-to-file rule for trade marks. To obtain protection of a mark in Thailand, a registration must be obtained from the Department of Intellectual Property (DIP) initiated by filing an application with the Trademark Office.

How do regular attendees manage sessions, meetings and seeing the sights at the annual meeting?

A monthly column devoted to IP curiosities and controversies, named in honour of John of Utynam – who received the world’s first recorded patent in 1449 diary@managingip.com

The European Patent Office has released its 2011 statistics, according to which the number of new patent applications filed has reached an all-time high of 244,437. Some 24% of the new applications filed in 2011 originate from the US (28% in 2007), and 32% come from Asia (25% in 2007). EPO member states account for 38% of all filings (40% in 2007). Some 33,181 applications were filed by German applicants, and 12,107 by applicants in France. Switzerland comes in third. The number of UK-based applications has dropped by 9.4% compared to the previous year to a total of 6,464.

In nullity suits before the German Federal Patent Court, the verdict of the Court has a binding legal effect on the parties involved. Thus, the nullity plaintiff having lost a suit cannot file a further nullity suit against the same patent for the same reasons. The legal effect of the Court's verdict is supposed to finally settle the dispute between the parties involved and an exception to this rule can only be acknowledged under very specific exceptional circumstances.

On December 8 2011, the District Administrative Court dismissed an appeal by the holder of the word and design mark Sphinx, filed against the decision of the Polish Patent Office dismissing invalidation of the word and design trade mark Cleopatra.

On March 30 the Directive Council of the Portuguese PTMO (INPI) issued decisions 01/2012 and 02/2012 updating their internal procedures on supplementary protection certificates (SPCs), in order to reflect the recent decisions by the Court of Justice of the EU in Merck, Medeva, Georgetown, Yeda, Queensland and Daiichi.

In December 2010 and January 2011, Szekely Domokos Szabolcs filed two national trade mark applications consisting of the figurative element showing an interdiction sign of a pregnant woman drinking: