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Last month, the Chief Judge of the Federal Circuit urged district courts to do more to tackle frivolous patent litigation. Vernon M Winters explains what measures are available, and how they can be used better

Patrick Sands and Thor North explain the most important changes for patent filers brought about by Australia’s Raising the Bar amendment

The Chinese Supreme Court recently published the list of top 10 IP litigation cases of 2012. One selected case is the final judgment decided by the Zhejiang High Court regarding the patent infringement litigation between Holley Communicates and Shenzhen Samsung Kejian Mobile Communication.

Filing a Belgian patent application presents several major advantages to applicants. Indeed, filing a Belgian patent application only involves the payment of a very low filing fee (€50) and a search fee (€300), these two fees being sufficient to obtain, after only a formal examination, a granted Belgian patent within two or three years of the filing date. This means that an invention may be protected on the Belgian territory in a short time and at a low cost.

On March 8 2013, the Canadian Intellectual Property Office (CIPO) issued a notice to its examiners regarding the examination of computer-implemented inventions for determining patent-eligible subject matter. This notice follows the Federal Court of Appeal decision in Canada (Attorney General) v Amazon.com Inc relating to the patentability of business and computer implemented methods, which resulted in the grant of Amazon.com's one-click patent in January 2012.

On May 14 2013 the General Court dismissed the appeal against the decision of the Board of Appeal of OHIM rejecting a trade mark application for the word fluege.de, under Article 7(1)(b) and (c) CTMR. The application was for services for "advertising, business management, business administration, office functions, transport, packaging and storage of goods, travel arrangement, services for providing foods and drink, accommodation services" in classes 35, 39 and 43.

On May 7 1997, Caterpillar Inc, a US company, filed two trade mark applications for its marks Caterpillar and design and Cat and design covering goods in class 14, such as watches, clocks, cuff links and tie tacks. On December 11 and 12 2002, Manolo P Samson, a Filipino businessman, filed his opposition against Caterpillar's trade mark applications.

The US Patent and Trademark Office's Trademark Trial and Appeal Board (TTAB) provides, among other things, a forum for trade mark owners to oppose the issuance of a certificate of registration for a mark filed by a third party which it believes is confusingly similar to its registered mark. Although the TTAB can issue a decision as to whether two marks are confusingly similar such that one of them should not be entitled to registration, the issue of whether one mark infringes another is beyond the scope of a TTAB proceeding and is instead left to the courts.

The use of expert witnesses in patent cases, and the emphasis put on them, varies between jurisdictions and even judges. What reforms are needed?

In several cases, a trade mark cannot be registered, even if it has sufficient distinctiveness, because there is an identical or similar trade mark previously registered or applied for to distinguish the same goods or services. Even though the Trade Mark Law does not specifically use the terms "confusion or likelihood of confusion", its main purpose is to avoid this situation. Section 3 of the Law says that a trade mark identical or similar to one previously registered or applied for to distinguish the same goods or services cannot be registered.