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As a signatory to the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), South Africa introduced the South African Biodiversity Act in 2004 in order to comply with its international obligations. The process did not, however, end there as further legislative protection was required to assure full compliance with the CBD and the Bonn Guidelines on access to genetic resources and the fair and equitable sharing of benefits arising from their use. To this end the South African Patents Act has been amended to link it to the South African Biodiversity Act.

Eileen McDermott, New York

Patent owners from both large and small companies have welcomed France's decision to take the final steps needed to implement the London Agreement, which will cut the translation costs involved in obtaining a European patent

Benoît Battistelli, director-general of INPI, also serves as vice-chair of the European Patent Office's Administrative Council and is closely involved in the IP policy preparations that France is making as it gets ready to take on the presidency of the EU in July this year. He spoke to Emma Barraclough about fees, work sharing and the debates about patent litigation in Europe

The UK Intellectual Property Office has changed its policy on the patenting of software, two weeks after a judge said that the Office was wrong to reject all patent claims to computer program products

Under United States trade mark law, trade mark rights are territorial. Therefore, owners of well-known foreign trade marks which are not in use in the United States may face the dilemma of what enforcement options may be available to prevent a US company that has sought to take advantage of the renown of a foreign mark by offering goods and services in the United States under the well known foreign mark without authorization of the trade mark owner.

The current patent law in the Sultanate of Oman was introduced by Royal Decree number 82/2000, but due to logistical and administrative constraints, the Omani patent office only started accepting patent applications in December 2005, after the Ministry of Commerce published the official fees of patent applications in Oman.

On December 3 2007, the Bureau of Legal Affairs (BLA), the adjudication bureau of the Intellectual Property Office (IPPhil) presented to a public hearing proposed amendments to the rules and regulations on administrative complaints for violation of intellectual property laws. The objective of the amendments is to speed up the prosecution by the BLA of IP violation cases, for example, infringement, unfair competition, false designation of origin, false or fraudulent declaration.

As noted in our update in last month's issue, the Knesset (Israel's parliament) recently enacted the Copyright Law 2007 "Copyright Law", which establishes a comprehensive statutory copyright regime and replaces legislation enacted in 1911 and 1924. The new law will come into effect in May 2008. In addition to the changes in respect of copyright ownership and moral rights discussed in last month's update, other significant changes include:

The Austrian Supreme Court has requested a preliminary ruling from the European Court of Justice (ECJ) regarding the three–dimensional trade mark of a sitting golden chocolate rabbit (CTM number 1,698,885).