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Registration on the USPTO's Principal Register offers valuable substantive benefits to a trade mark owner. However, certain marks – such as those that may be considered descriptive of certain features of the goods or services recited in the Application – are not eligible for registration on the Principal Register absent a showing of secondary meaning. If a trade mark owner is unable to obtain a registration on the Principal Register, there are still federal registration options available that can provide the owner with certain protections. One such option that a trade mark owner can consider is seeking registration on the PTO's Supplemental Register.

On June 15 2009, eight member countries of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), namely Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam, launched the first regional patent cooperation program called the ASEAN Patent Examination Cooperation (ASPEC). It is a program in which the Intellectual Property Offices of the participating member states shall use the search and examination results of one participating state as reference in its one member state's own search and examination. The objectives of the ASPEC are reduced examination work, faster turnaround time and better search and examination because some IP offices might have better access to databases unavailable to the other IP offices.

Under current patent practice in the field of pharmaceutical inventions, it is required that a pharmaceutical invention be clearly defined by its pharmacological efficacy in terms of diagnosis, treatment, reduction and prevention of certain diseases. In exceptional cases, it is possible for a pharmaceutical invention to be defined by its pharmacological mechanism without clearly defining diseases for which the pharmaceutical invention is used.

Colonel Krishan Lal Vadehra and Sharad Vadehra, of Kan & Krishme in New Delhi, provide advice for patent applicants in India and review examiners' approaches to what constitutes patentable subject matter

There is a major social debate going on in Japan right now as to whether Japan should introduce a general concept of fair use into its Copyright Law.

The Major Events Management Act came into force in 2007 to provide greater protection to sponsors of important events from ambush marketing. The legislation provides protection for major events and protection for emblems and words relating to the Olympic Games and Commonwealth Games.

Five years after the entry into force of Community Regulation No 1383/03 relating to Customs control measures, it is now time to draw the initial conclusions, all positive, regarding its effectiveness. The European Commission has published, for the year 2008, data that confirm a significant increase in Customs activity:

The issue of divisional applications continues to keep the EPO busy on various levels. The Enlarged Board of Appeal (EBA) has previously dealt extensively with the allowability of amendments to divisional applications in decisions G 1/05 and G 1/06, and a new set of rules, aimed at limiting the number of divisional applications, will enter into force in 2010. Despite the EPO's past efforts to clarify the procedural peculiarities of divisionals, a new question has now arisen, which the EBA is to consider in pending case G 1/09.

On October 1 2009, the Law on Simplification and Modernisation of the Patent Law will enter into force in Germany, and the amendments affect several German acts relating to intellectual property.

From Venkatesh Hariharan, corporate affairs director, Red Hat