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Businesses are going to surprisingly great lengths in order to protect their marks in the increasingly competitive Arab market. Certainly, brands owners should now be fully aware of all trade mark issues specific to the Arab region. Heading this list would be the classification system in each country and the extent to which this classification is in line with the international standards defined by the Nice Agreement. Owners should also be informed of the explicit requirements that are a characteristic of the relatively conservative countries, such as the GCC countries, seeing that the local laws are mostly governed by the doctrines of the Shari'a law (the body of Islamic religious law).

Today, the Mexican legal system does not regulate geographical indications (GIs). The sole protection in the Mexican legal system is provided by the Mexican Industrial Property Law (IPL), which in Article 90 subsection X prohibits the registration as a trade mark of a geographical denomination when it indicates the provenance of a product and may cause confusion regarding its origin. Title V also provides the rules for granting appellations of origin (AO) and for the authorization of their use.

Article 67-3(1)(iii) of the Patent Act provides that an application for patent term extension shall be rejected when the period for which the extension is requested exceeds the period during which the patented invention was unable to be practised. In this case, the issue was whether this case fell under this ground of rejection or not.

Indonesia is waiting for the new Copyright Law to be declared by the government this year. There are at least 66 laws in the National Program of Legislation in 2014, including the Indonesian Copyright Law, that are scheduled to be reviewed by the parliament and then issued by the government during this year. The declaration of the new copyright law itself is significant to replace the existing law which is considered out of date and not in accordance with recent issues.

In a recent and interesting decision, the Delhi High Court has granted a decision in favour of Roche, temporarily restraining the marketing of Mylan and Biocon's biosimilar to Roche's Trastuzumab/Herceptin, to a limited extent.

The first instance court of Athens has recently issued a judgment regarding a preliminary injunction, applying some interesting criteria for granting such injunctions.

In a nullity suit before the German Federal Patent Court (BPatG) and Federal Supreme Court (BGH) the court and attorney fees are calculated from a fictitious "value in dispute", which is determined by the court as the value of the patent upon filing of the suit plus the sum of damages accrued. As a matter of law, the losing party has to absorb the costs of the other party. If more than one nullity suit is independently brought forward against a patent, this results in a multiple cost risk for the patentee.

The French Cour de Cassation (highest court) ruled on January 7 2014 in a case related to an ownership claim and statute-barred period.

When the new European Unified Patent Court (UPC) is established, it will – for those countries that have ratified the UPC Agreement – have jurisdiction not only over new European unitary patents, but also over European patents granted by the EPO for which no unitary effect has been registered. However, during a transitional period (initially seven years) it is possible for owners of such non-unitary European patents to opt out from this regime (Article 83 UPC Agreement).

The Administrative Council of the EPO has recently announced two changes to the EPC implementing regulations (Rules), concerning fee reductions and fee refunds.