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On April 3 2008, the Intellectual Property Office of the Philippines (IPOPhil) held the first of its two scheduled stakeholders' forum for the year. The objective of the forum was to provide speedy and effective legal remedies to improve the quality of the decisions rendered and to promote the Bureau of Legal Affairs (BLA), the adjudication division of IPOPhil, as a forum of choice and to promote mediation as an alternative means to resolve disputes. The forum was attended by over a hundred practitioners, and presided by the director-general himself, Atty Adrian Cristobal Jr Some of the suggestions given by the IP practitioners are below.

The Intellectual Property Office of New Zealand (IPONZ) recently completed a review of its practice of raising objections based on morality considerations, and has just released new guidelines that may cause difficulties for some biotechnology patent applications.

European Commission vice-president Günter Verheugen last month called for a Community patent and single litigation system

Israel has increasingly become an important centre for conducting multinational clinical trials, with major pharmaceutical companies sponsoring trials in the country's many academic and medical facilities. With high-quality medical professionals and leading academics, in addition to a diverse population base and a modernized regulatory environment, Israel is an attractive venue for conducting clinical research.

Any business would be able to register gTLDs under proposals likely to be approved later this month

Changes to European patent law have brought an end to the need for Swiss-type claims. Béatrice Holtz and Lionel Vial of Lavoix explain what replaces them

Two IP owners trying to assert their rights by dispatching letters to competitors found the Australian courts unsympathetic. Charles Tansey of Shelston IP explains why

• German pharma company Bayer suffered a blow when the antitrust authority in Germany fined it €10.3 million on April 28 for fixing the price of Aspirin and other over-the-counter medications.

Organizations in the Middle East are becoming more aware of the importance of and the value associated with their intellectual property rights. IP is being recognized as a primary or key asset of an organization and a key tool for achieving and maintaining a competitive advantage. Branding that incorporates the use of IP is also seen as an essential element of success in today's business environment and is responsible for conveying messages to consumers to differentiate a business and its products in the marketplace.

The Italian Constitutional Court issued a decision (Number 112/2008) last April relating to the legal situation of lawsuit proceedings which are now under appeal and which were originally heard – during the first instance – by ordinary courts, that is according to the rules that applied before the entry into force of Decree Law Number 168/2003 of 2003, which created dedicated IP courts responsible for hearing IP matters.