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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.

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

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.

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.