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The precise legal situation when it comes to the protection of intellectual property in the Caribbean territories of the Kingdom of the Netherlands is probably in the blind spot of most Dutch patent and trademark attorneys. A recent constitutional reform seems a good occasion to set the legal framework straight.

International Non-Proprietary Names (INNs) are names for pharmaceutical substances or active pharmaceutical ingredients recognised as public property. They are treated as generic names by international authorities, with around 8,000 published at present.

Pham Vu Khanh Toan and Tran Dung Tien of Pham & Associates discuss recent developments in IP protection

Qing Ge of Liu, Shen & Associates considers potential problems for patent owners as a result of the changes introduced by the new juridical interpretation

Peter Ollier talks to Weerawit Weeraworawit about looking at intellectual property as a human right and the impact of the TRIPs Agreement on the Asia-Pacific region

Varicom Communications, an Israel company, filed a patent application (IL 135684) in Israel. Over the course of the year, the idea was developed somewhat, and a PCT application claiming priority from the Israel application but with added material, was filed.

With the increasing realisation among stakeholders of the importance of IP rights, we have seen a large number of disputes pertaining to its protection and preservation. It may not be surprising to see disputes involving two or more such rights. An example is the overlap between copyright and designs, which has been rightly dealt with in Section 15(2) of the law addressing the possibility of an artistic work (so copyright) being adopted as a design and enjoying larger protection than a registered design. The section rightly stipulates that once an article has been reproduced industrially 50 times, an artistic work ceases to enjoy either design or copyright protection.

Under German law, reinstatement of rights is only possible under specific conditions as regards content and the terms of the request. The request must be filed within two weeks from the notice of lapse of right, but within one year from the actual lapse. The intention of the latter term is to ensure legal certainty, and is usually handled very strictly.

The big player – ZTE Sean Ke, IP director

As reported in the this section in September 2009, the procedural peculiarities of divisional applications have kept the EPO's Enlarged Board of Appeal (EBA) busy for a while. On September 27 2010, the EBA delivered its decision in case G 1/09, in which the EBA was to consider at which point in time the "pending" status of a European patent application ends, ie when the applicant's deadline for filing a divisional expires if the parent application is refused.