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In a recent judgment, the Athens First Instance Court accepted a preliminary injunction action filed by various collecting societies representing producers and authors of works against various internet service providers (ISPs) and granted an injunction containing technological measures against them.

Article 4 of the EU SPC Regulation only grants purpose-bound protection for SPCs (special purpose certificates). Nevertheless, the specific drug's use (its purpose) is supposedly of no relevance concerning the obtaining provisions in article 3, as held by the Court of Justice of the EU (CJEU) in Yissum, where the court declined to recognise a marketing authorisation (MA) for a new medicinal indication of a formerly authorised substance as the first MA in terms of article 3(d). This appears to be contradictory.

From December 1, Australia will adopt plain packaging for tobacco products – a standardised pack on which is printed the trade mark in standard size, font and place, with no logo and no colour. The aim is to knock out the attractive appearance of the packaging, supposedly suggesting a "glamorous" world of tobacco.

Eight years ago, the Beijing High Court rejected Apple Inc's application for its bitten apple trade mark in class 25, due to a prior registered apple trade mark in the same class owned by a Chinese company, regardless of the high reputation of the opposed trade mark all over the world, including China.

On August 1 2012, the Administrative Measures for Prioritised Examination of Patent Applications for Inventions came into force, which will allow invention patent applications to be examined in an expedited manner. Under the Measures, the prioritised examination procedure will last less than a year and the first office action will be issued within 30 working days, from from the date on which the prioritised examination is granted.

Belgium has a useful tool against IP infringers: descriptive seizures. By means of an ex parte request to a competent Court of Commerce, IP owners can obtain allowance for such a seizure. The only evidence that is needed is a proof of existence of the IP right and some evidence that there is a prima facie suspicion of infringement. The court will in nearly all cases allow the descriptive seizure and then appoint an expert who – without any advance warning – will show up on the doorstep of the alleged infringer, accompanied by a bailiff and sometimes the police, with a court order granting him access to the premises for a description of products or manufacturing processes that may be present.

The Austrian Supreme IP Tribunal recently sent some questions to the Court of Justice of the EU (CJEU) in Luxemburg to clarify aspects of the requirements under which a trade mark becomes generic.

The Australian Patent Office has released new draft regulations directed at substantially curtailing response periods for patent prosecution and opposition.

In a December 2010/January 2011 briefing in Managing Intellectual Property we made reference to a judgment rendered by the Court of Appeals in Civil Matters, Division D, of August 2010, in relation to the liability of search engines regarding the content of websites published by third parties.

The term 'pro-drug' is used to describe a pharmacologically inactive form of a drug that becomes therapeutically active in the human or animal body. Metabolites are derivatives from the active ingredients that are produced in vivo. Pro-drugs and metabolites are thus interlinked. A pro-drug is generally designed to improve the physical and chemical properties of a parent drug to enable formulation development, improve delivery, and/or achieve targeting.