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On December 13 2005, the Polish Patent Office granted protection for a word trade mark Bio-Active, destined among others for the marketing of body care cosmetics in Class 3. As a result of an opposition filed by a third party, the mark was subsequently cancelled. In its reasoning, the Patent Office argued that Bio-Active is not only devoid of distinctive character, but also descriptive in respect of cosmetics, as it indicates their specific properties. In addition, an average Polish consumer will easily understand the meaning of the term bio-active regardless of the level of fluency in English. The Patent Office also stressed that bio-active is a commonly used term on the Polish market for designating properties of various products, substances or their components.

On February 1 2012, the Intellectual Property Office (IPPHL) uploaded the Revised Implementing Rules and Regulations (IRR) for Patents, Utility Models and Industrial Designs, the object of which is to streamline administrative procedures in granting patents and enhance the enforcement of IP rights in the Philippines. One lesser known procedure in opposing patents before grant is the acceptance of observations or adverse information from any person. While this procedure was present in the old IRR, the new IRR gives it more emphasis.

Most New Zealand patent attorney firms (the author's firm included) advise a large number of clients, some of whom may be competitors. The New Zealand patent attorney profession is small and options for representation can be limited. The impact of this has been recognised previously by the New Zealand Court of Appeal in similar cases.

Recently, the Court of Appeal (Hof) at The Hague ruled on the validity of Lundbeck's patent on the antidepressant Escitalopram. The ruling is remarkably different from that in several other countries, particularly in denying the patentability of the product claims.

In the past year, the Mexican Patent Office has issued record numbers of arbitrary and criteria-less final rejections of Mexican patent applications across all technology areas. Most of the rejections have been directed to computer-implemented inventions and business method-related inventions.

For many years, the courts have raised objections to the non-unity of the patent applications and divisional applications. This matter and the provisions of Section 26B of the Patents Act 1983 in Malaysia were addressed in a recent case.

In an exhaustive landmark ruling on February 17 2012, the Delhi High Court in Samsung Electronics v Kapil Wadhwa & Ors, held that the rule of national exhaustion applies under the Trademarks Act 1999 and granted an interim injunction against parallel imports.

There is a peculiarity in the Greek Trade Marks Act regarding the protection of a registered trade mark. Under the provisions of Article 32 of the Act, the civil courts do not have the power to examine, even as an incidental matter, whether the conditions exist for a trade mark to be cancelled, even when it comes to their attention that there are grounds for non-approval or cancellation.

The German Federal Supreme Court (BGH) has recently put an end to the moot question of whether the registration of a domain provides a right in rem, thus establishing a comparable relation of ownership as existing in relation to IP rights. In its decision on January 18 2012 the BGH had to deal with this question in an action where the claimant sought a sentence against the defendant to agree that the claimant shall be registered as proprietor of the domain gewinn.de (profit/price). The claimant based its claim on Sections 823(1) and 1004(1) of the German Federal Civil Code (BGB). These provide a right to request abatement of a nuisance as a result of an act of tort. However, the entitlement for compensation under the German legal concept of tort requires an infringement of a right in rem in nature comparable to other IP rights.

The IDN (Internationalised Domain Name) standard was created in 2003 to allow domain names to be adapted to local or regional characters. It therefore permits the registering of names containing letters used in particular countries or regions, such as letters with accents.