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Following on from the recent substantive changes to obviousness under our Patents Act, the Patents Office has now sought to introduce further changes to the Act, likely to affect Australian patent rights.

In an infringement case, the Austrian Supreme Court developed its previous case law on the scope of protection of trade marks. The decision also deals with the defence of non-use of the plaintiff's mark in the past with respect to intermediary rights.

The owner of the mark Buckfast registered in 1981 for goods and services related to beekeeping sued for infringement a beekeeper who had published ads offering to sell hives with "Buckfast" bees. At trial and on appeal, the beekeeper lost.

On May 15, a full bench (three judges) of the Delhi High Court delivered a decision on important questions of law in the Microlube case. Certain common and important legal issues arose in two different suits relating to design infringement and these issues were referred to the larger bench in view of prior conflicting decisions issued by the Delhi High Court.

The price drop of original medicinal products in Greece has always been triggered by the expiry of the first patent covering the active pharmaceutical ingredient (API) of the product in question.

Over the past few years trade mark protection in the Middle East has become more attractive to brand owners worldwide. And with increasing demand for more comprehensive trade mark protection, it has become more and more important to consider issues of local language and culture.

It is common practice for computer games to feature likenesses of sports teams (for example PS3 All Blacks Rugby Challenge) or sports stars (such as Michael Jordan in NBA 2K11 for PS3). But what happens when the creators of a game use an athlete's likeness without permission?

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 Intellectual Property Office of Singapore (IPOS) has announced that a two-year pilot patent prosecution highway (PPH) programme between Singapore and China is targeted to start on September 1 2013. IPOS are therefore taking further steps to increase collaborations with other patent offices to reduce duplication of work and speed up the patent application process.

Cable television system operators retransmitted terrestrial channels, including channels subject to mandatory retransmission pursuant to the Broadcasting Act, without providing any payment to the relevant terrestrial broadcasters in Korea. Therefore, on September 10 2009, KBS, MBC and SBS (the three terrestrial broadcasting stations) filed a preliminary injunction seeking the suspension and prevention of various infringements against a major operator, alleging that the retransmission infringed their copyright (the right of broadcasting from the rights of communications to the public) and neighbouring rights (simultaneous relay broadcasting rights).