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On January 16 2009, the Appeals Court of the Supreme People's Court in Ho Chi Minh City overturned a ruling of a lower court in a trade mark cancellation case that has drawn the attention of many IP practitioners and scholars in Vietnam.

The registered Community design offers quick, cheap and easy protection for a wide variety of designs in the EU. Carole De Roeck and Bénédicte Linden of Gevers & Partners provide a guide for applicants

In a recent hearing in Eli Lilly v HGS, Lord Justice Jacob gave some important guidance on the approach parties should take when there are parallel proceedings in the UK and before the EPO.

Amanresorts Limited and Amanresorts International Pte Ltd (Amanresorts) are two companies under the umbrella of the Amanresorts Group. Amanresorts are the proprietors of various trade marks comprising the word Aman and/or the prefix Aman including Amanusa around the world (but their Amanusa mark in Singapore was not renewed at the relevant time). Amanresorts operates many exclusive and luxurious hotels and resorts around the world and Amanusa is one of Amanresorts' exclusive high-end resorts in Bali.

The Administrative Council of the EPO recently decided on changes to the EPC Implementing Regulations in Decision CA/D 3/09 that will come into force on April 1 2010. It is believed that these changes, inter alia, enable the speeding up of the examination procedure, as does the opinion accompanying the European search report, which was introduced a few years ago. At present, however, the intended acceleration is not achieved when the applicant delays the reply to the search report until the first communication is received shortly after the request for examination has been filed.

In the case of Elba SpA v Fiamma Sdn Bhd [2008] 3 MLJ, Elba, an Italian maker of cooking appliances, filed an originating motion for a declaration that it owned the Elba mark and that Malaysian company Fiamma's Elba registrations in class seven and 11, which had been registered for more than seven years, were entries made without sufficient cause and/or were entries wrongfully remaining on the register. Elba also asked for an order to expunge the marks from the register under sections 37 and 45 of the Trade Marks Act 1976.

An Amendment Bill to part of the Copyright Act was presented to Congress on March 10 2009. The aim of the amendment is to speed up and advance the circulation of digital content. The amendment is a response to various problems that relate to the exploitation of copyright works on the Internet.

The well-known carmaker Mazda has registered trade marks for the word Mazda and its logo, which are both famous trade marks, in Austria. A firm in the province of Lower Austria offers chip-tuning services for different types of cars. In chip-tuning, chips are built into the electronic command parts of the car to achieve a higher power output of the motor. However, chip tuning also leads to much higher wear, making original warranties and guarantees no longer valid. To advertise its services, the firm runs a website on which it lists the cars for which it offers the service. In doing so, it uses the word marks and the logos of the car manufacturers, among them the marks of Mazda. Mazda sued for trade mark infringement.

FICPI World Congress,

Companies worldwide have been affected by the global credit crunch. Karen Abraham and Jyeshta Mahendran of Shearn Delamore & Co look at what strategies brand owners can adopt to weather the storm