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In December 2012, the Indian Patent Office (IPO) issued draft guidelines on the examination of patents relating to biotechnology. The draft has been made public in order to solicit comments.

Under the Greek law on trade marks, a trade mark owner has to prove that its mark is a famous one both in infringement cases before the civil courts and in opposition or cancellation action proceedings before the Trademarks Administrative Commission and the administrative courts, since the concept of a famous trade mark is considered to be a matter of fact, not a matter of law.

Apriority claim is valid only if all features of a technical teaching described by a patent claim can be derived, directly and unambiguously, from the disclosure of the priority document. In a recent nullity case (BGH X ZR 3/10), the German Federal Supreme Court (BGH) overruled the Federal Patent Court (BPatG), which had decided that a patent claim enjoys priority even if one of its features is only implicitly, but not directly and unambiguously disclosed in the priority document.

Article 107 EPC governs the question of who has the right to file an appeal against a first-instance decision by the EPO. It states that "Any party to proceedings adversely affected by a decision may appeal". This places two requirements on the appellant – they must have been party to the first-instance proceedings, and they must have been adversely affected (at least one of their requests must have been rejected).

A Community trade mark registration provides its owner with rights in each of the 27 member states, and as the EU expands those rights are extended to new member states as well.

Article 31 of the PRC Trademark Law provides that individual's name rights shall be protected as a kind of prior legitimate right, including the name of foreign persons. In Kate Moss v TRAB and Jin Shengqiang, the Beijing High Court ruled that the application and use of the opposed trade mark Kate Moss infringed the name rights of the famous British model, which should be prohibited. Early this year, our law firm also handled a similar case, where the China Trademark Office rejected registration of Amaya Arzuaga & Device trade mark, since Amaya Arzuaga is the name of a famous Spanish designer. Also, recently, the Beijing No 1 Intermediate Court ruled that application of the Iverson & Device trade mark in class 25 infringed the name rights of former NBA Star Allen Iverson.

SIPO recently issued a Draft of the Regulations on Service Inventions for public comment, which could have a big effect on the invention remuneration policy and internal procedures of any entity in China who has service inventions made by employees. The Regulations cover the following main points:

On September 5 2012 the Court of Gravenhage in the Netherlands issued its decision in a procedure between amongst others Recticel, a Swiss manufacturer of beds and mattresses, and Swiss Sense, a Dutch company in the same sector.

As reported some time ago, Red Bull's trade mark Flügerl ('small wings' in German) had been cancelled because the Austrian Supreme Court found the sign was only used in a descriptive manner for alcoholic drinks, but not as a designation of origin.

The Australian Productivity Commission has released a draft report on the compulsory licensing of patents.