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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.

As mentioned previously in this column (December 2010), the EPO has amended its procedures immediately prior to grant of a European patent. The changes are effected in Rule 71, and new Rule 71a EPC, which enter into force on April 1 2012, and apply to European patent applications for which a communication under existing Rule 71(3) EPC has not been dispatched by this date.

The State Administration for Industry and Commerce recently announced that the examination period for trade mark applications has been further shortened to 10 months, comparable to the time taken by the US and Japanese offices. The examination period for opposition and dispute cancellation applications has also been shortened, to 18 months.

Lindt's golden bunny has – as is generally known – already hopped its way to Luxembourg in order to clarify under what conditions a trade mark application has been filed in bad faith.

Australia is about to see an alteration to its patent laws driven by the Australian Patent Office. The Intellectual Property Laws Amendment (Raising the Bar) Bill 2011 was just passed by the Australian Senate. Given the lack of political interest or opposition to the Bill, it is likely to be approved within three months, to become law 12 months after approval.