Search results for

Norway’s new Trade Mark Act entered into force on July 1 2010. The new Act mainly represents a modernisation of the old Act and codification of existing case law, but nevertheless introduces a few practically important changes worth mention.

Article 19, section VII of the Mexican Industrial Property Law establishes, inter alia, that methods of therapeutic treatment applicable to the human body and to animals shall not be considered as inventions; as a result, such methods are expressly excluded from patentability. However, under Mexican law and practice, there is no exclusion of the possibility for patenting a (new or known) substance or compound for any specific use in a method of therapeutic treatment, as long as such use is new and the claims directed to this kind of matter are written under the first medical use format (compound X for use as a medicament and/or in the treatment of condition Y), or under the subsequent medical use format, also named second medical use format or Swiss-type format (the use of a compound X for manufacturing a medicament for treatment of disease Y).

Alendronate is marketed by Merck as Fosomax, which has annual worldwide sales of over $1 billion.

Several amendments to the implementing regulations for the European Patent Convention (EPC) which entered into force on April 1 2010 and are intended to realign the European patent grant procedure under the initiative Raising the Bar lead to legal obscurities and uncertainties, in particular with respect to determining time limits to be observed under the EPC.

The doctrine of exhaustion or the first sale rule affirms the exhaustion of an asset's intellectual property rights vested with its owner after its first use or sale. As a result, no further control can be exercised by the owner vis-à-vis distribution or resale of the product. Applying the principle more specifically to the realm of copyrights, it allows the purchaser to sell or give away a legally made copy of a copyrighted work without permission once it has been obtained. The copyright holder's right to control any further change in ownership of a particular copy ends once that copy is sold, as long as no additional copies are made. Thus, the rule of exhaustion has the power to interfere with the copyright owner's exclusive market position, reducing any leeway for price differentiation and exposing the product to intensified price competition.

A new referral, G2/10, is pending before the Enlarged Board of Appeal (EBA) of the European Patent Office. The question to be considered by the EBA is the following: does a disclaimer infringe Article 123(2) EPC if its subject matter was disclosed as an embodiment of the invention in the application as filed?

Manisha Singh Nair of LEXORBIS IP Practice discusses recent court decisions in relation to pharmaceutical patents

Sylvan Browne suggests a way to deal with the problem of hindsight bias when assessing the obviousness of a patent application

Fionn O’Raghallaigh and Emma Barraclough, London

According to the Greek law on trade marks, administrative authorities (the Trade Mark Administrative Commission and the administrative courts on appeal) have exclusive jurisdiction on all disputes relating to the right on a trade mark, while civil courts have exclusive jurisdiction on all disputes relating to a trade mark infringement. Naturally, this dualism in jurisdiction may give rise to several concerns in cases, where there may well be an overlap. A typical example would be a trade mark infringement case, where the defendant raises the objection that the claimant's trade mark, sought to be protected, lacks distinctive character or has become of common use.