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What is the ideal way to resolve a dispute? For IP owners, the answers may vary, but words that often come up include: quick, non-disclosed, amicable and cost-effective.

In principle, a case record (including briefs and evidence submitted by either party) of a Japanese court is publicly available. However, upon request from a party alleging that the record contains a trade secret, a court may issue: an order to restrict third party inspection of a case record and/or an order to require the addressee, such as counsels and employees of the other party, to maintain confidentiality. Recently, the IP High Court and the Supreme Court decided on the issues relating to these orders.

Australia

Elisa Cooper advises brand owners to maximise the potential of a domain name portfolio in an economic downturn

With the marketplace becoming increasingly international in scope and the availability of goods and services on the internet continuing to expand, trade mark owners are perpetually faced with the challenge of monitoring and protecting their brands. Obtaining a trade mark registration and then simply relying on employees to watch for new uses of trade marks by competitors are not sufficient steps to adequately protect a brand. If a brand owner does not diligently monitor the marketplace for potential infringement, by the time the brand owner learns of a third party's infringing use of the mark, the damage caused by such use often has already been done and enforcement options have become limited. Therefore, as a company's business grows, it is important that they develop a comprehensive trade mark protection strategy to safeguard their brand from infringement by third parties and to prevent the dilution of their valuable trade mark rights.

Egypt

Following the Federal Circuit's decision in In re Bilski (Fed Cir 2008), when a method claim is not tied to a particular machine or apparatus and does not transform a particular article into a different state or thing, the patent claim will be held invalid for failing to meet the so-called machine-or-transformation test for determining patent eligible subject matter under § 101 of the US Patent Act. When the Court reaffirmed this test, it prompted commentators to wonder whether many existing business method patents might be invalid. The impact of Bilski on the future of business-method patents is a subject of much concern among the intellectual property community. However, pharmaceutical method patents claiming an abstract mental process about a natural phenomenon may also be at risk.

On September 17 2008, the Italian Ministry of Economic Development, which includes the Italian Patent and Trade Mark Office, issued a formal list of all Italian supplementary protection certificates (SPCs) that are still in force, indicating their expiry date. The list is in the form of a legislative decree signed by the relevant minister.

Within a very short period of time, the ECJ had to answer two questions from the Austrian Oberster Patent- und Markensenat for a preliminary ruling. Both questions concerned Article 12 of the Trade Mark Directive, that is the genuine use of a trade mark, and in both cases the trade marks were used without gaining any profit by the trade mark owner. So one could assume that the answer to both questions should be similar – not at all!

The Full Federal Court has rebuffed an attempt to appropriate the international reputation of the Monster Energy brand drink in Australia in Hansen Beverage Company v Bickfords (Australia) Pty Ltd [2008] FCAFC 181.