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With the coming into force of the amendments to the Industrial Designs Act on July 1 2013, a design must be new not only in Malaysia but in the world to be validly registered. Applications filed before July 1 but registered after July 1 will be subject to this international novelty requirement and it usually takes about nine months for an application to be registered. Another key amendment is the extension of the duration of design protection from 15 years to 25 years for all existing and new registrations in line with UK and EU design protection.

The expiry of blockbuster drug patents intensifies disputes between brand-name pharmaceutical companies and generic drug manufacturers. This case is one such dispute. In some cases, a brand-name pharmaceutical company restrains a generic pharmaceutical manufacturer from selling generic drugs based on combination patents after the single brand-name drug patent has expired.

On July 27, while upholding the validity of one patent (the '017 patent) granted to Glaxo Group Limited, the Intellectual Property Appellate Board (IPAB) revoked another (the '171 patent), for lack of inventive step and as being hit by Section 3(d). Both the patents relate to lapatinib and its compounds. Interestingly, both decisions rest on the adequacy of the pleadings and evidence on record – while in the first case the IPAB concluded that the petitioner who challenged the patent failed to satisfy his burden of proof, in the second case, it was the patentee who failed to satisfy his burden of proof.

Is it a good or a bad thing to be described as a "combatant witness"?

Fulfilling rising client expectations not only requires an attorney's patent prosecution acumen, but also increasingly an understanding of the client's business model. More and more CEOs understand that IP can be an effective revenue generator and a vital part of a company's value. Patent attorneys are therefore well advised to keep an eye on the business side when working with industrial clients.

The Paris Court of Appeal recently had to rule on the French trade mark Moulin Rouge, registered for goods in class 16 (Moulin Rouge SA (Belgium) and Bal du Moulin Sv s Les Editions du Tertre SA – May 17 2013). It is true that the famous French cabaret is more internationally known for its dancing girls than for its pencil cases.

Alternative dispute resolution (ADR) is a modern, fast and low-cost alternative to traditional litigation that has yet to take hold in the Croatian legal system.

When filing a trade mark application, applicants should provide true information about their business and nationality, as well as the nature of the goods/services etc. If they do not, the application will be rejected under Article 10.1.8 of the PRC Trade Mark Law and the PRC Supreme Court's [2010] No 12 Opinion, as these four cases show.

In a typical case from the Annual Report on Intellectual Property Cases (2012) of the Supreme People's Court of China, the Supreme Court held that "in assessing inventiveness, when a patent applicant or patentee submits comparative experimental data after the filing date to prove an unexpected effect generated by the claimed technical solution, the precondition for acceptance of the experimental data is that the effect to be proved is expressly described in the application documents as originally filed": see case number 20 of the Annual Report regarding the Supreme Court's Administrative Ruling (2012) Zhi Xing Zi Number 41, which involves a patent validity dispute, Takeda Pharmaceutical Co Ltd v Patent Reexamination Board, Sichuan Haisco Pharmaceutical Co Ltd and Chongqing Pharmaceutical Research Institute Co Ltd.

The Canadian Intellectual Property Office (CIPO) recently released a Practice Notice providing guidance for the construction and examination of medical use claims. It is well-established that methods of medical treatment and surgery are not patentable subject matter in Canada. However, medical use claims, such as "use of product X for treating disease Y", or claims having similar language, are generally patentable as long as they do not include an active treatment or surgical step and they meet all other requirements for patentability. The Notice specifically addresses examination of claims directed to dosage regimens or dosage ranges.