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Hongyi Jiang of LexField Law Offices in Beijing provides a guide to patent litigation in China, focusing on the process, timing and award of damages

New SIPO Regulations and Guidelines came into force this year. Stephen Yang of Peksung Intellectual Property Ltd examines how they affect issues such as security examination, PCT applications and design patents

Wang Gang of China Patent Agent (HK) explains why companies need to be aware of changes to the rules for rewarding inventors

A monthly column devoted to IP curiosities and controversies, named in honour of John of Utynam – who received the world’s first recorded patent in 1449

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.

Traditionally, the Australian Patent Office carries out the majority of substantive examinations of Singapore patent applications on behalf of the Singapore Patent Office. Lately, however, the European-based patent offices of Austria, Denmark and Hungary are increasingly carrying out substantive examinations of Singapore patent applications.

Nanotechnology has sparked activities in seemingly unrelated fields. The Patent Office faced a growing number of applications claiming trade marks that incorporate the word "nano". The businesses try not to be behind the time and swarm to stake a claim to anything nano. The number of nano trade marks is about or more than 400 and almost all of them have been registered in the recent past.

The conduct of a raid by authority of a judicial search warrant, preceding a criminal action for trade mark infringement or unfair competition is perceived by many trade mark owners as one of the more effective means of combating counterfeiting, because it allows for immediate seizure of the infringing goods and there is the threat of possible imprisonment of the infringers. Therefore, a raid yielding negative results is disappointing not only to the IP owners but also to the lawyers and enforcement agencies involved. It also emboldens the alleged infringers to file a suit for damages against the search warrant applicants. This was the situation in the case of Arthur Del Rosario and Alexander Del Rosario vs Hellenor Donato, Jr. and Rafael V. Gonzaga (docketed under GR no 180595), decided by the Supreme Court on March 5 2010.

Mexican intellectual property law protects producers, manufacturers, and service providers of all types from having the distinctive features of their products copied, exploited or reproduced without the proper authorisation.

The case deals with questions from the Dutch Court of First Instance on the interpretation of the Biotech Directive in relation to the general patent law. Especially important was whether a claim directed to a gene sequence would have a scope of protection that was determined by the normal patent law (an absolute scope of protection like any chemical compound) or whether the protection of a gene sequence would be limited to the protection as defined in the European Directive on the Protection of Biotechnological inventions (Directive 98/44/EG), a purpose-bound protection.