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As reported in previous briefing articles, the EU's Competitiveness Council reached an agreement on the basic principles of a unitary EU patent and the establishment of a European and European Union Patent Court (EEUPC) in December 2009. However, the EEUPC suffered a major setback by a ruling of the Court of Justice of the EU (CJ) dated March 8 2011, according to which the establishment of the EEUPC would be incompatible with EU law.

The Opinion on Various Issues Relating to the Applicable Laws for Handling Criminal IP Infringement Cases jointly published by the Supreme People's Court, the Supreme People's Procuratorate and the Ministry of Public Security clarifies certain trade mark issues relating to IP crimes, set out below.

The use of internet publications in legal affairs is surrounded by serious concerns as to their reliability, in particular about their date of availability. Even if an earlier date may be retrieved for a particular internet page, it remains uncertain whether the retrieved page is faithful as to what was actually available at the older date.

Memantine, a drug developed by Merz back in the 1960s, had been on the market in Germany even before September 1 1976, when it was authorised on the basis of Article 3(7) of the AMG 1976 on the basis of transitional arrangements, provided for under the national legislation transposing Directive 65/65, which exempted medicinal products already on the market from the application of the Community authorisation procedure for a period of 12 years. This old German transitional authorisation expired on January 1 1990, although Merz remained on the German market until July 9 2002.

Recent patent changes at the Australian Patent Office have attempted to restrict applicants filing patents for business method patents.

After more than a decade since the regulations of the new Patent Law came into force (which implemented the TRIPs requirements regarding the patentability of pharmaceutical products), it is important to evaluate the impact of this patentability on access to medicaments, and on the public health in general.

In Group LFE v Swartland Winery, the Supreme Court of Appeal in South Africa has ruled, in essence, that a trade mark can still be a trade mark even if it is also a descriptive geographical indicator.

TiVo and EchoStar have ended their years-long dispute via a $500 million settlement and licences that will enable the companies to work together

Following the USPTO’s announcement that it will sharply cut its budget, lawyers reiterated the need to stop diverting user fees to other government programmes

China’s two biggest telecommunication companies are now involved in patent and trade mark litigation against each other in Europe and China