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Kenji Sugimura of Sugimura International Patent & Trademark Attorneys summarises recent changes in patent practice in Japan

US and EU antitrust regulators have toughened their stance against deals between generic and originator drugs companies

The Supreme People's Court issues its latest IP Interpretation

Austria

I am starting a business and want to expand to only a few countries. The process for registering a trade mark in those countries looks simple. Should I do it myself?

In many jurisdictions, non-conventional trade marks are in principle recognised as valid and viable trade mark types, but trade mark owners seeking to register such marks will often face special problems, with stricter registrability tests being applied than in the case of conventional trade marks. This is certainly also the situation in Switzerland under current practice. However, in a recently published decision, the Federal Supreme Court established for the first time in its practice the criteria for registrability of musical marks (sound marks consisting of a sequence of musical notes) and thereby significantly facilitated the registration of such marks compared to the previous practice of the Swiss Trade Mark Office and the Federal Administrative Court.

On December 7 2009, the Court of Appeals reversed the decision of the Regional Trial Court of Makati dated July 15 1998, finding Philippine Airlines (PAL), the country's national airline, guilty of infringing the patented shell designs of Sabine Koschinger, with award of nominal damages and attorney's fees of P70,000 (about $1,500). Koschinger was the owner of two industrial design patents (4271 and 4273) filed with the Intellectual Property Office (IPPhil) on May 31 1988 and issued on January 24 1989. She claimed that for its first class flight accommodations, PAL used table linen and placemats depicting her designs without her authority. From January to April 1988, PAL purchased its linens and placemats with Koschinger's shell design through the Philippine Trading International Corporation (PITC), but in May 1988 PAL stopped ordering from PITC and sourced it elsewhere.

Austrian rules on remuneration for inventions made by employees are in several aspects quite different to those in Germany. Two of them are highlighted here.

On November 9 2009, the Supreme Court heard oral argument in In re Bilski, a case that will likely impact whether business methods, already patented and to be patented, are eligible for patent protection under US law. Patent-eligibility under section 101 of the US patent code is one of several hurdles to patentability, and requires that an invention be a "new and useful process, machine, manufacture, or composition of matter". Not all processes are patent-eligible. Although the Supreme Court has not yet precisely defined what is required of a process to be eligible, it has identified what is not eligible for patenting – laws of nature, natural phenomena, and abstract ideas (the Diehr test).

Last year Syria amended the provisions of its trade mark law that deal with the protection of famous marks.