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President, global domains division, Icann

In Europe and the US, numerous decisions regarding FRAND terms and the enforceability of standard essential patent (SEP) have been issued. In Japan, on February 28 2013, the Tokyo District Court made the first decision on whether the enforcement of SEP with the patentee's FRAND declaration would be limited.

The odds can be increased for defendants seeking to stay patent litigation in favour of patent office validity review. Jeffrey Totten and Eric Jeschke identify four ways to do this

Global Awards 2014

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 Indonesian government through the Indonesian Patent Office is sending letters to at least 7,600 Indonesian patent owners in order to claim unpaid annual fees along with additional interest as soon as possible. More than half of the said unpaid patents are owned by foreign entities.

Every once in a while the question whether there is copyright on patent documents surfaces. For the Netherlands this question has now been answered. In a monograph, published at the request of the Dutch Association of Patent Attorneys, Professor Quaedvlieg (University of Nijmegen) has delved extensively into this subject.

Human beings from time to time make errors and that is why most of patent laws have a provision for restitutio in integrum. The Belgian patent law only had previously a provision for re-establishing a patent in case of non-payment within the time limit of a renewal fee. The provision for re-establishment of right provided further only a two-month period for requesting re-instatement, from expiration of the grace period. This was clearly not a real re-establishment of right since the loss of right is rarely discovered at that time!

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?