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On December 13 2009, the CNNIC, the regulator of the .cn TLD, issued an urgent notice. The gist of the notice was that beginning at 9am on December 14 2009, no individuals are qualified to register a domain name. A domain name applicant is also required to submit a copy of the business licence (or a business bar code certificate) to the domain name registrar.

Article 29 of Law 3784/09 revises the provisions of the Unfair Competition Act regarding the limitations period for unfair competition claims.

In our previous columns we have emphasised the importance of exercising duty of candour in the prosecution and preparation of patent applications in Canada. In Ratiopharm Inc v Pfizer Limited, Mister Justice Hughes was very critical of "self-serving" statements in patent applications and found a patent invalid partly on the basis that the invention failed to live up to its claims of being "outstanding" and "markedly better than prior art compounds". In Lundbeck v Ratiopharm (2009), Madam Justice Mactavish revisited the duty of candour during prosecution and held a patent invalid despite the fact that the applicants had expressly drawn a particular piece of prior art to the examiner's attention and despite the fact that she considered the invention was neither anticipated by it nor obvious over it. Her rationale was that the applicants made the general statement that the prior art as a whole taught away from combining two compounds, whereas that was not true of the particular reference in question. This underscores the need to consider the impact of each known reference before making any sweeping generalisations in submissions to the examiner.

A new trend in US copyright cases could save litigants thousands of dollars in discovery costs. Simon Frankel, Shannon Nestor and John Freed explain how

From December 18 2009 the Patents Act, Section 3, third subsection 5, states that the exclusive right obtained by a patent does not include "trials, experiments and similar of a patented medicine that are required to obtain a marketing authorisation for a medicine in a state that is a contracting party to the agreement of 15 April 1994 on the establishment of the World Trade Organisation".

Last November the European Parliament unanimously adopted a resolution to introduce the compulsory labelling of the mark "Made In" to indicate the origin of goods imported into the European Union.

In 2001, Australia introduced a new form of patent called the innovation patent system. Patents granted under this system have a term of eight years. Significantly, the innovation patent system allows for the grant of patents that would be considered obvious in the US or Europe. Having no obviousness test allows patent holders to exploit what would otherwise be considered a very weak patent.

Mae Lin Ng and Pui Keng Lim of Advanz Fidelis look at possible amendments to the Trade Marks Act and pick out significant court cases of the last year

When two parties own and use arguably similar marks, they are often able to address their respective concerns regarding the other's use and resolve any differences between them amicably by entering into what is commonly referred to as a Co-Existence Agreement. A Co-Existence Agreement typically operates to either provide consent from a senior user of a mark to a junior user's use of a similar mark and/or to resolve a dispute regarding competing uses of a mark when an adversarial proceeding is pending.

IP owners and advisers discuss the challenges they face in Malaysia with Kamel Mohamad, head of the Intellectual Property Corporation of Malaysia