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The EU Enforcement Directive has raised issues over IP enforcement across Europe, leading to delays in implementation in some member states. Gareth Morgan, Valerie Budd and Dietrich Kamlah compare the challenges the Directive poses in the UK, France and Germany

Musician turned patent enforcer Judah Klausner is lining up law suits against some of America's biggest communications companies. He spoke to Shahnaz Mahmud about his plans, and why he denies being a patent troll

Emma Barraclough, London

A company that has a trade mark filing in place in a foreign jurisdiction has multiple options when considering an expansion of its trade mark rights into the United States. Specifically, US trade mark law provides several mechanisms pursuant to which a foreign trade mark owner can use the priority established by a foreign trade mark filing when making a filing in the United States.

A prominent businessman is driving on Sheik Zayed Road one day and sees his image on a billboard advertising a property development in Dubai. An employee of a desert tour company is flipping through a magazine and sees his image used in a leaflet advertising the company's activities. A student is at an art gallery and comes across a photograph in which she is prominently featured. In all of these cases, the permission of the people featured in the photographs and advertisements was not obtained.

For PCT applications that have an international filing date on or after July 1 2004 and which enter the national phase in Singapore under Chapter I, one of the search and examination procedures available is to file a statement saying that the applicant wishes to rely on the international preliminary report on patentability (IPRP) of the PCT application and proceed to grant. In other words, Chapter I cases can rely on the IPRP for grant, thereby avoiding the need to request local examination in Singapore.

The issue of improving the Russian legislation in the field of intellectual property has long been on the agenda. Ever since the new versions of IP laws were adopted in 2002-2003 (the Russian Copyright law was amended in 2004) there was much discussion about further improvements. In fact, the amendments of three years ago did not solve all the problems though they did make some good patches over the legislative gaps. The work continued and by 2006 there were prepared numerous proposals for the patent and trade mark laws.

The Intellectual Property Office of the Philippines, IPOPhil, officially launched its new service called TM Online on April 25 2006. After encountering some initial problems, TM Online became available to the public in May 2006. This project is not new. As early as November 26 2004, IPOPhil issued Office Order No. 25 Series of 2004, amended by Office Order No. 42, providing for the rules on the trade mark electronic filing system. However, its implementation was deferred following demand from practitioners for clearer rules. The following are the requirements for using TM Online:

Following a major amendment to China's Trade Mark Law in October 2001, prior to it becoming a member of the WTO, China intends to amend its Trade Mark Law further. A draft was published on April 18 2006 for public consultation. Some of the proposed changes are as follows:

On July 18 2006, the full court of the Australian Federal Court, in Grant v Commissioner of Patents [2006] FCAFC 120, made a significant pronouncement likely to add confusion to the borders of possible business method patent protection in Australia.