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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

Tian Lipu, Commissioner of China’s State Intellectual Property Office, sets out his vision for innovation in China and for the development of the international IP system

The Australian Patent Office has, by its own initiative, issued a new examination directive which attempts to adopt a more European approach to obviousness. The amended test for obviousness, to apply from August 1 at the Office is "Would the person skilled in the art (in all the circumstances) directly be led as a matter of course to try the claimed invention in the expectation that it might well produce a solution to the problem?"

Emma Barraclough, London

A survey of 80 Chinese in-house IP counsel spells out their global filing strategies. Peter Ollier and Janice Qu analyse the numbers, and profile four companies that typify the trend

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

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.

The total number of patent filings in China by foreign parties has exceeded 1 million. The breakdown for inventions, utility model and design patents is roughly about 865,000, 16,000 and 121,000 respectively. The three top filing countries are Japan, the US and Germany. The number of filings has increased considerably in recent years. In 2005, it was only 500,000. Between January and August this year, China saw a year-on-year increase of 12.9%.