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A little known provision of US law, 28 USC § 1782, allows for the use of US discovery proceedings to secure evidence for use in foreign judicial or administrative proceedings. This has been employed successfully to assist in patent infringement proceedings outside of the US, and may even be used in patent opposition proceedings outside of the US.

Section 27 of the Thai Trade Mark Act allows for the possibility that confusingly similar trade marks may be registered if they have been honestly and concurrently used by their owners. This provision, however, has seldom been put into practice by the Thai Registrar and Board of Trade Marks when considering applications for potentially similar marks. Instead, the Registrar and the Board tend to flatly reject marks that may be deemed similar to existing registrations.

Few problems on the Russian IP landscape stir public opinion more than parallel imports, which have been the talk of the day for almost two years, playing the same tune for months. First, it was the administrative prosecution that stumbled in every other case until the Supreme Arbitration Court said that administrative prosecution of parallel imports was not possible. For the sake of order it should be acknowledged that the Code on Administrative Offences has clumsy wording in the section dedicated to trade mark infringement. This allowed parallel importers to evade responsibility – not always but sometimes. To offset the chagrin of the trade mark owners, the Supreme Arbitration Court also said that the civil law had enough tools to protect trade mark rights against infringement.

On October 26, 2009 the Intellectual Property Office (IPPhil) presented proposed special rules on IP litigation to the Chief Justice Reynato Puno of the Philippine Supreme Court. The rules were crafted in coordination with the various stakeholders and led by IPPhil. Some of the important points of these rules, which are aimed to speed up court processes and reduce litigation costs, are:

As a non-EU member state, Norway is not bound by the provisions of Directive 2004/48/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council of April 29 2004 on the enforcement of IP rights.

Since the expiry of its patents in July 1978, the Danish toy manufacturer Lego has made numerous attempts to stop competitors from entering the market for the well-known interlocking toy bricks. In November 2008 the European Court of First Instance decided that the 3D shape of the brick cannot be protected by a trade mark. Lego is appealing this decision.

A review of the Sale of Liquor Act 1989 is currently under way in New Zealand. The New Zealand Law Commission (NZLC) has recommended a complete redraft of the current legislation, which governs the sale and supply of alcohol, to ensure accessibility to non-legal professionals required to abide by its provisions.

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.