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From Venkatesh Hariharan, corporate affairs director, Red Hat

The intersection between copyright in a pattern and design rights on the same has come for determination before the courts on many occasions. A recent Delhi High Court judgment has clarified the position, on an appeal filed by Microfibres against the order of the single judge. The single judge held that if the design is registered under the Designs Act, it would lose its copyright protection under the Copyright Act. When a design is registrable under the Designs Act but has not so been registered, it would continue to enjoy copyright protection under the Copyright Act so long as the threshold limit of its application on an article by an industrial process for more than 50 times is reached. But once that limit is crossed, it would lose its copyright protection under the Copyright Act.

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 were implemented in the Greek national law by law 3524/26.01.2007. This implementation was partial since only the relevant passages of the copyright law (law 2121/93) were specifically amended.

On June 22 2009, the Supreme People's Court of China made an announcement aimed at consolidating the jurisdiction of certain types of first instance IP appeal cases to the IP Tribunal of the Beijing no 1 Intermediate People's Court. This new decision came into effect on July 1 2009.

In a recent judgment the Austrian Supreme Court had to decide a case on knives that were protected as registered Community designs. These knives were sold in sets consisting of 11 knives, where the knives were packed in two layers of five and six such that when the cover of the package was taken away all of the handles of the knives could be seen. The infringement of the registered Community design was a clear-cut case and was not even appealed to the Supreme Court by the defendant.

A dated, stale trade mark may affect an IP owner's bottom line. Making the mark fluid may be a good solution but also entails risks under Benelux and Community law. Flip Petillion and Cedric Vanleenhove explain how to minimise them

Trade mark owners who want to stop other businesses from incorporating their marks into company names have a range of options open to them. Managing IP asked correspondents in six jurisdictions to outline the rules

IP lobbying extends to more than just official policy making. Peter Ollier looks at how companies can ensure that their voice is heard during litigation in Asia

Pravin Anand and Gitanjali Bhatnagar, of Anand and Anand in New Delhi, explore the ethical concerns, legal spats and validity issues raised by licences in the IT industry, and look at potential overlaps with patent rights

India has only recently introduced product patents. Ramesh C Dhawan and Sunaina Koul of Lall Lahiri & Salhotra consider what impact the changes will have on multinational companies, the local industry and public health