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The Intellectual Property Office of Singapore (IPOS) has issued a clarification on the issue of second medical use claim practice in Singapore. On September 22 2010, IPOS released an Examination Guide to Singapore law and practice for contract examiners of pending Singapore applications, being one of the Austrian, Danish or Hungarian Patent Offices. The Examination Guide provides, amongst other things, a section on the allowability of purpose-limited product claims when used for claiming subject matter relating to a second or further medical use of a known substance or composition.

Bucharest Court has recently rejected, in the first procedural phase, the action filed by the producer of Rafaello white-chocolate pralines covered in coconut against the distributor of Lumar wafers in Romania, for lacking grounds. Lumar wafers have a spherical shape, are filed with cream and coated in coconut.

The Director General of the Intellectual Property Office (IPOPHL), Ricardo Blancaflor, drawing on his experiences as former undersecretary of the Department of National Defense, and the Department of Justice where he handled activities involving anti-terrorism, anti-human trafficking, and the task force against political violence, has come out with some novel and less costly ways of assisting trade mark owners to enforce their IP rights in addition to raids, filing actions and border control measures. One of these is obtaining the cooperation of malls or shopping centres where the selling of counterfeits proliferates.

Norway (in addition to Finland) only accepted product patents on active ingredients in medicaments from January 1 1992. Prior to this date only "analogous method of preparation" type of claims where accepted. This means that we still have active patents in Norway comprising such claims until the end of 2011 and Supplementary Protection Certificates (SPCs) until the end of 2016 (July 2017 if pediatric extensions are included).

In case T1544/07 one of the opponents filed an appeal against the decision of the EPO Opposition Division to maintain the opposed patent in amended form. This would normally be a situation where the prohibition of reformatio in peius applies. But in this case, the Board of Appeal decided otherwise.

According to Article 153 of the Mexican Industrial Property Law, a mark can be cancelled from the register when it has become in trade and for relevant consumers, the usual name of the products or services it was registered for. This referenced provision regulates the case of marks that – by acquiring of fame and the tolerance of its owner – becomes the usual or generic name of a product or service in trade.

February 15 2011 marks the implementation of expedited patent examination in Malaysia by the Intellectual Property Corporation of Malaysia (MyIPO), under the Malaysian Patents Act 1983 subject to the Patents (Amendment) Regulations 2011. Apart from bringing a large number of patent examiners of various technical expertises to overcome the backlog of pending patent applications in Malaysia, the introduction of expedited examination is one step to reduce patent pendency by expediting and accelerating allowance and issuance of a patent application.

The Customs surveillance service in Italy and in the EU was set up under EU Regulation 1383/03. Its purpose is to counter the spread of counterfeiting by boosting border checks.

Galel Yassin, an Arab resident of the Palestinian-administered territories imported cheap training shoes from China retailing for about £5 a pair. The shoes included four parallel diagonal stripes on each side. Israel Customs seized the goods, which Adidas claimed were infringing its famous three-stripe logo. The importer offered to add a line crossing through the four stripes, or a big cross on top; the solution to be implemented before the shoes were released from the docks. Adidas rejected both compromises.

The rapid growth of the internet in Indonesia has allowed the emergence of new conflicts that could trigger a breach of domain name and trade mark rights. For example, if a party registers a domain name using the mark of another party of which the registrant is not the trade mark holder, this action constitutes a trade mark infringement. In Indonesia the domain name registration is generally done without prior examination process. The examination performed by the governing body of domain names is merely based on the domain name registered previously.