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In a significant victory for rice growers and exporters, India has won a trade mark row against a Malaysian firm that was granted registration for the mark Ponni for rice, a premium aromatic variety developed and grown in Tamil Nadu, India since 1971.

The Hong Kong government has promoted Peter Cheung Kam-fai to replace Stephen Selby as director of the territory’s IP department.

The Israel Patent Law is anomalous in that pending applications do not publish automatically 18 months after priority. Only after allowance is an abstract published and the file becomes available for inspection. However, basic details of new patent filings, including the name of applicant, title, priority and filing dates were required by law, to be published in the Official Israel Patent Office Gazette (Reshumot in Hebrew) shortly after filing.

Along with the development of science and technology that affects economic competition in the global market, and to implement the provisions of International Treaties, in 2010 the Directorate General of Intellectual Property Rights of the Department of Justice and Human Rights prepared a draft amendment to law number 14 of 2001 concerning patents. Its main purpose is to provide an ordinance to protect the interests of the inventor of patents and improvements in the Patent Law Regulations.

Thomas Pattloch has left his post as IP officer at the EU delegation to China and Mongolia in Beijing to join the Munich office of UK full-service law firm TaylorWessing.

The Delhi High Court, in Tata Sons v Greenpeace, recently denied interim injunction to Tata Sons, in an action that sought a permanent injunction and damages amounting to Rs100 million ($2.17 million) against Greenpeace. Tata has initiated an action for infringement of trade mark and defamation and disparagement against Greenpeace. The cause of action for the case arose from a game, modeled around the popular Pac-man game, named Turtle v TATA, that depicts turtles being chased by the Tata logo. The game was intended to raise awareness on the alleged adverse impact of the Dhamra Port Project, a joint venture project between Tata Sons and Larsen and Toubro, on Olive Ridley turtles.

Patent applications may be filed at the German Patent and Trademark Office (GPTO) in a language other than German, provided that a full translation of the foreign language application is filed within three months from the filing date. According to Section 35 of the German Patent Act, the application is deemed not to have been filed if a complete translation is not filed in time.

Wragge & Co has hired IP litigator Tom Carver as the new director of the firm’s office in Guangzhou.

The General Court of the EU recently found that the Commission infringed the copyright and know-how of Systran machine-translation software. To sanction this behaviour, on December 16, 2010 it ordered the Commission to pay Systran liquidated damages of €12.001 million.

The Raising the Bar initiative at the EPO has – via a number of changes in the Implementing Regulations and EPO Guidelines – attempted to streamline examination. Among other things, the introduction of new EPC Rules 62a, 63 and 70a attempt to introduce elements of examination at the search phase, so that when a patent application reaches the Examining Division, it should be clear what the invention is, what is claimed and what has been searched.