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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.

Under the EPC and Belgian law, granted European patents must be validated within three months of the date on which the mention of the grant, maintenance in amended form or limitation is published in the European Patent Bulletin. According to the Belgian Patent Office, validation requires filing a translation into any one of the three official languages in Belgium: French, Dutch, or German. Belgium is not a party to the London Agreement. In practice, only those European patents written in English require a translation.

In a recent decision, the Austrian Patent Appeal Board had to decide whether an internet disclosure was proven to be published before the priority date of the patent in suit. In this decision, the Board clarified that disclosures on the internet certainly do belong to the prior art. However, in view of the volatility of disclosures published on the internet, there is high standard of proof for the party relying on the internet publication.

The Australian Patent Office has introduced a further issues paper as a prelude to further amendments to the Patents Act 1990. Given previous practice, the proposed changes are likely to be introduced verbatim into the Act.

As previously explained (Managing IP, September 2012), Argentine legislation regulating the protection of test data (Law 24.766 -Confidentiality Law, Executive Order 150/92 and Article 39.3 of the TRIPs Agreement) allows third-party reliance on information concerning the safety and efficacy of a product , reliance that is not authorised by the originator of the data.

Intellectual property seems to be on the negotiating table everywhere except Geneva. Emma Barraclough argues that the demise of multilateralism will cause long-term problems for IP owners, as approaches to everything from patent terms to trade mark registration are rewritten, treaty by treaty

Many free trade deals go beyond the provisions of the WTO’s TRIPs Agreement. Here are some of the obligations parties often sign up to that particularly affect pharmaceutical companies

Justin Hughes gives an insider’s account of the negotiations that led to the landmark Marrakesh Treaty, signed in June

It’s the time of year when many people are embarking on a career in IP. We asked three experienced practitioners what advice they would give