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Back in 2008, Lisa Pearson of Kilpatrick Townsend & Stockton in New York wrote an article for us on what she saw as an emerging trend: the increasingly dynamic use of trade marks, with brands not just evolving but deliberately distorting their key features to retain their appeal online. She called them fluid marks.

The legislative office of the State Council posted the newest draft of the implementing rules to China’s new Trademark Law on its website last Friday. It had circulated a first draft to various organisations in December but not to the general public

Discount supermarket chains may be associated with trade marks for all the wrong reasons, but new figures suggest they have been busy filing marks of their own

In the wake of the Law on Advertising, which came into force on July 1 2006, the State Duma adopted some changes to the Criminal Procedure Code. The Criminal Code already contains provisions for the punishment of IP infringers and in past years those sanctions have been made harder. Now the new procedure makes it easier for law enforcement bodies to deal with infringement cases in the field of copyright. At present, only public prosecutors are empowered to initiate criminal cases against infringers according to Section 146 of the Criminal Code. The new provision of the Criminal Procedure Code empowers the police to prosecute wrongdoers in copyright matters. A criminal case according to Section 146 may be initiated if the damage to the copyright owner is more than R50,000 ($2,000). A crime of this calibre shall be punished by imprisonment of up to five years.

Peter Ollier, Hong Kong

A partner at a Netherlands-based firm told Managing IP that other UPC divisions would soon catch up with the busier German courts

Michael Sharp, formerly an IP counsel at Aurora Cannabis, has joined Canadian firm Field Law

The Free Trade Agreement between Chile and the US has closed a dangerous loophole in Chile's patent protection framework. Juan Pablo Egaña explains how patent holders can make the most of the change

Well established as an offshore financial centre, the island of Guernsey is now looking to attract IP owners with a series of new laws. James Nurton reports

The global COVID-19 pandemic is affecting the world in various ways. One of the lessons we have learnt from this traumatic period is that while people always tried to find value in cooperation rather than in rivalry, cooperation could be more fragile than expected, especially in a multilateral scenario.