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In a manufacturer-distributor relationship, does the distributor have trade mark rights? The question was answered by the Court of Appeal in La Pointique International Ltd v Soo Juan Choon & Co, Civil Appeal W-02-3706-10.

On March 15 1989, the Department of Health (DOH) issued Administrative Order Number 67 series of 1989 entitled Revised Rules and Regulations on Registration of Pharmaceutical Products. This required drug manufacturers to register certain drug and medicine products with the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) before release to the public, and to submit satisfactory bioavailability/bioequivalence (BA/BE) test results to secure a certificate of product registration (CPR). This requirement, however, was put on hold because there was no local facility capable of conducting the test. In 1997, the FDA issued Circulars Numbers 1 and 8 resuming the implementation of the requirement for the BA/BE testing.

Ruth Burstall and Iona Silverman review two design cases that cast some light on issues such as the scope of protection and the overall impression on the informed user, but argue that many questions remain unanswered

In light of the UK government’s recent announcement that it intends to introduce regulations to provide for plain packaging, Katharine Stephens, Toby Bond, Manon Rieger-Jansen and Graham Maher take stock of the policy’s impact in Australia and the legal challenges it has faced

Last year, in the Schütz v Werit case, the UK Supreme Court clarified when replacing a consumable part of a larger patented article constitutes patent infringement. Mark Marfé, Sabine Boos, Camille Pecnard, Riccardo Fruscalzo and Rik Zagers examine how the issue has been addressed in the UK, Germany, the Netherlands, Italy and France

North America Awards 2014

With a population of some 165 million, Nigeria is far and away Africa's most populous country. It's also well on track to becoming Africa's biggest economy in terms of GDP. But how is its IP?

A mark can be registered as long as it meets the requirement of "distinctive capacity". This concept has two components: (1) the intrinsic identifying capacity, which refers to the identifying ability of the sign considered in itself, independent of all others (principle of originality); and (2) the extrinsic identifying capacity, understood as the suitability of a sign to be registered for being different from others already existing (principle of novelty).

An inventor (the plaintiff) has concluded a contract with a firm (the defendant) to market together his invented product under his trade mark. The contract was concluded for an unlimited period without clauses for termination. The firm made substantial investment in tests and development of prototypes to make the product fit for the market. But after some time the inventor sent a termination letter and finally sued the firm for trade mark infringement as the firm continued using the trade mark for marketing that product. The question was whether such termination withdrawing the consent to trade mark use is possible and is valid or – as the firm stated – is disproportional and a misuse of law in view of the high investment not yet regained.

The trade mark system in Mexico faces several problems because there are numerous trade mark registrations in the Registry that were granted to identify a lot of products and/or services within one class. In commercial practice these trade marks are not used to identify each and every product and/or service protected, but only to identify one or some of them.