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Apple Inc applied to the Swiss Trade Mark Office to register the word mark IPHONE for broadly worded goods in classes 9 and 28, the specified class 9 goods being essentially telephones and functionally related products. The Office rejected the application for the class 9 goods on the grounds that the mark IPHONE will be immediately understood by consumers as describing a telephone with internet- or information technology-related functions, and accordingly represents a non-distinctive, descriptive indication.

There are many reasons why counterfeiting should be taken seriously. Fake goods pose a threat to public health and safety. Further, counterfeit products cost brand owners millions of dollars each year in lost revenue.

Four months after they were introduced, the impact of the recent rules on the protection of Made In Italy is encouraging.

Legal music streaming services offer a real alternative to illegal downloading sites. So why aren’t they growing faster, asks Emma Barraclough

Since November 1 2007, a change in the Belgian Patent Law has made the courts of the Chambers of Commerce (in the jurisdictions where there is a Court of Appeal) the competent courts to decide patent cases, instead of the courts of first instance. The aim was to centralise the patent cases in fewer courts, five in practice, to ensure that these cases would over time be treated by more experienced judges.

How IP offices are tackling pendency

Section 6 of the Thai Trade Mark Act stipulates that a mark must be distinctive in order to be registrable. Section 7 (2) specifies that the word or clause employed in a mark must not directly refer to the character or quality of the goods. When examining a mark's potential descriptiveness, registrars usually use standard print dictionaries as their main reference. With recent technological advances, however, registrars have also begun to use internet sources to determine the meaning of some trade marks. Of course, the reliability of these online dictionaries may be called into question.

The Supreme Court has set important precedents on business method patents in Korea by hearing two cases.

The German Federal Court of Justice (FCJ) has repeatedly emphasised in a series of decisions (Seitenspiegel, 2005; Kettenradanordnung, 2007) that the interpretation of a patent claim is a question of law and thus may not be committed to the court expert, but is the original duty of the court.

In the Austrian legal system a concept or defence based on acquiescence or past tolerance of behaviour is unknown – only the statute of limitation exists. Acquiescence has been implanted into it as alien element only in the Trade Mark Law and in the Law Against Unfair Competition as far as it regulates commercially used signs when Austria in 1999 finally implemented fully Article 9 of the EU Trade Mark Harmonisation Directive. No wonder that Austrian trade mark owners and courts still struggle with this concept.