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The Indonesian government's IP enforcement team, known locally as TimNas, has begun the process of consulting with stakeholders about its IP enforcement strategy for 2010.

Confidential information relating can take the form of any business formula, process, R&D capabilities, client-related or operational information that ought to be protected as a trade secret. Any breach in handling such confidential information violates the IP rights of the concerned party and has been pursued through the courts on many occasions. The Delhi High Court has deliberated on the misuse of confidential information relating to industrial drawings and the grant of permanent injunction to restrain those drawings in case of Action Construction Equipment v Gulati Industrial Fabric P Ltd IA no 10073/2006 IN CS(OS) no 1740/2006.

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.

The obligation to protect undisclosed test or other data necessary for the marketing approval of pharmaceutical or agricultural chemical products established by Article 39.3 of TRIPs is a matter of intense debate. It can be argued that scientific data protection constitutes a new and autonomous IP category, and that acknowledging data protection as a new IP category is the only suitable way to protect the data originator's right. GATT- TRIPs provides this acknowledgment.

The Canadian Federal Court emphasised the importance of filing a patent application with the correct set of figures in Scannex Technologies, LLC v Attorney General of Canada (2009 FC 1068). After a US patent application was filed, a corresponding international patent application was filed under the Patent Cooperation Treaty (PCT) with a different and thus incorrect set of figures. This PCT application entered the national phase in Canada as a Canadian patent application. The applicant requested that the Commissioner of Patents substitute the incorrect figures in the Patent Application with correct figures pursuant to section 8 of the Patent Act, which affords the Commissioner the discretion to correct clerical errors. In support, the applicant filed an affidavit stating that incorrect figures were filed due to the unintentional error of a clerk of the applicant's agent in the US, and filed a certified copy of the US patent application containing the correct figures. Notwithstanding the applicant's efforts, the Commissioner refused to correct the figures. The applicant then applied to the Federal Court for judicial review.

The false marking troll is on the prowl following two recent court rulings. Thomas Turano advises companies how to steer clear of these clever critters

Battles between publishers and Amazon over the right price to sell e-Books have highlighted the difficulty of pricing content online, says Peter Ollier

• Federal Circuit bolsters design patents The Federal Circuit in February overturned a ruling by the International Trade Commission (ITC) that said that shoe designs mimicking the popular Crocs footwear did not infringe the company's design patent. In his opinion, Judge Randall Rader of the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit applied the Egyptian Goddess standard for determining design patent infringement. He criticised the ITC for its "excessive reliance on a detailed verbal description in design infringement cases", saying that the written claim description in this case "distorts the infringement analysis by the ordinary observer viewing the design as a whole". Lawyers say that the decision could encourage more IP owners to protect their innovations with design patents.

How IP offices are tackling pendency

The Commercial Court has raised the hopes of well-known brand owners facing the grim task of tackling trade mark pirates in Indonesia.