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We know that the most important purpose of a trade mark is to allow a customer to distinguish this product, with minimal private and social costs, from similar goods made by other manufacturers.

On October 9, the Osaka High Court acquitted the developer of the file sharing software Winny of abetting the illegal copying over the internet. The prosecutors appealed to the Supreme Court.

The Italian Ministry of Economic Development, which is responsible for all matters relating to IP rights, has recently been reorganised. This reorganisation involved the appointment of a new director of the Italian PTO and the creation of the National Anti-counterfeiting Council, a body aimed at directing, promoting and coordinating the strategic activities undertaken by the national administration and improving anti-counterfeiting activity at a national level.

As part of the Raising the Bar initiative, procedural changes to the EPC Implementing Regulations have been introduced to bring European patent applications in compliance with the EPC at an early stage of the grant procedure. Among these procedural changes a new Rule 62a EPC and amended Rules 63 and 64 EPC have been decided as discussed in a recent Notice from the EPO of October 15 2009.

Thus far in 2009, the Canadian Intellectual Property Office (CIPO) has consulted on five proposed practice changes relating to trade marks. These range from the substantive modifications to cancellation practice to the largely inconsequential revision to the manner in which CIPO publishes practice notices. This compares to a sole practice change in 2008 and none in 2007.

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

Pursuant to Article 67.1.3 of the Patent Act, an interested party may begin invalidation proceedings against an invention patent if the patent owner is not entitled to the invention.

In Romania, during the communist regime, all inventions considered of interest for the economy had to be assigned by their inventors to the state, through its institutions (such as ministries) or companies which were all entirely owned by the state. However, all inventions considered of interest that were not assigned by their inventors in favor of the state, were expropriated for the benefit of the latter. As a consequence of the legal or voluntary assignment, an author/inventor certificate was granted to the inventors who were also entitled to a consideration based on the advantages brought by the effective application of the inventions. In practice, in many cases, even if the law provided this consideration, it was not paid to the inventors.

Over the last four years there has been a clarification of the Polish Patent Office's (PPO) practice in the field of patent prosecution. The application of a divide-and-conquer approach to subject matter of patent applications have resulted in narrow criteria of patentability in general being established.

Malaysia’s Industrial Designs Act came into force 10 years ago. Patrick Mirandah and Suriyia Sadanathan of Patrick Mirandah Co looks at the law’s progress