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Circular 22/2009/TT-BYT issued by the Ministry of Health, effective May 24 2010, has clarified certain issues related to IP rights and drug marketing approval in Vietnam.

In Thailand, registrars seeking to solve the problem of a mistakenly registered trade mark may call upon the solution in section 61 of the Thai Trade Mark Act, which permits the Board of Trade Marks to re-examine such marks. Based on this section, the Board conducts re-examinations on distinctiveness, dissimilarity, and morality grounds only when an authorised person, limited to either an interested person or a registrar, files a cancellation petition to the Board citing section 61. In the view of many registrars, section 61 provides a means of effectively revisiting decisions; nevertheless, the registrars, having already given their approval, rarely seek to use this solution. Recently, however, the Board rendered a decision in favour of the registrar's use of section 61 by withdrawing a registered trade mark which had been registered for more than five years.

Tøyen tannlegevakt (TT) – a dental clinic – registered its logo consisting of a red cross containing four white As and a representation of a tooth in 2007. When becoming aware of the mark, the Norwegian Red Cross ordered TT to cease use because the mark was easily confused with the Red Cross emblem. When TT refused, Red Cross filed a complaint.

In a recently issued decision, the German Federal Court of Justice (BGH) had to decide whether decisions of the European Patent Office (EPO) or courts of other European Patent Convention (EPC) member states are binding on German patent courts (Decision of April 15 2010, Xa ZB 10/09 – Walzenformgebungsmaschine).

A US applicant has an International Registration (IR) number 479405 for the American Eagle trade mark. He extended his registration to Russia in respect of part of the goods in class 25, specifically, to pantoufles, chaussures en general d'origine americaine.

On July 1 2010 the Austrian Patent Office offers opposition procedures in addition to the possibility of cancellation proceedings. In doing so, Austria now has all the procedures available which are internationally standard in trade mark grant procedures.

The coming few years will bring a halt to the dominance of big pharmaceutical companies, which are exposed to patents that will expire on more than $80 billion-worth of blockbuster drugs. A famous example is the patent expiry of Eli Lilly's anti-depressant drug, Prozac, which reportedly lost 73% of market share within two weeks of generic launch. Similarly, Pfizer's anti-depressant Zoloft, which lost patent exclusivity, showed a decline in revenues to $531 million in 2007, compared to $3.3 billion in 2005. However, Pfizer's bigger concern in the near future is when the patent for other famous drugs such as Lipitor and Viagra will expire.

Over the past two years the Venezuelan patent system has adopted important legislative changes, which have forced doctrine and jurisprudence to review the current patent legal framework, as well as the mandatory nature of the rules developed in the Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property (TRIPs). The legislative changes have been made to ensure that inventors have appropriate protection for their inventions in accordance with international standards.

In the light of important recent and pending court rulings on patent eligibility, LiLan Ren of McKool Smith looks at the link between patents and economic development through history

Víctor Garrido of Dumont Bergman Bider discusses the efforts to apply a national innovation system in Mexico