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In a recently published appeal before the Amsterdam Court of Appeal (Netherlands Patent Office Journal 2009, Number 20, pages 75-78), the court considered the implications of an exclusive distribution agreement on know-how protection.

On July 1 2009, the Rule on Mandatory Legal Aid Service, which was issued by the Philippine Supreme Court on February 10 this year, takes effect. This Rule mandates practising lawyers to render free legal aid services equivalent to a minimum of 60 hours a year, in all cases whether civil, criminal and administrative involving indigent and pauper litigants needing lawyers. The purpose of the Rule is to improve access to justice by the less privileged thereby enhancing the duty of lawyers to society as agents of social change, and to the courts.

The European directive on the legal protection of biotechnological inventions 98/44/EC was transformed into national law on June 10 2005. The Austrian parliament has connected the establishment of a special monitoring committee to this transformation. This committee (the Biopatent Monitoring Committee) had the task of monitoring the impact of this transformation into Austrian law on

China's Supreme People's Court has explained how IP trials should be conducted in the economic crisis in a formal Opinion that may result in courts granting fewer injunctions

On June 6 2009, the Patent Cooperation Treaty (PCT) came into force in Peru. As a result, there are now three ways for obtaining protection for an invention: 1) the national application or direct application, 2) the application under the Paris Convention and 3) the application under the PCT system.

For applications filed after July 1 2004, The Singapore Patent Act provides a number of options for an applicant to obtain grant at 42 months from priority date under a fast-track system or at 60 months from priority date under a slow-track system. A decision to switch from a default fast track to the slow track must be done by requesting a block extension before 39 months have elapsed from the priority date.

The WIPO-administered Madrid System for the International Registration of Marks has been available in Greece since the 2000 by way of the Greek Law 2783/2000 and Decision K4-307/2001 of the Ministry of Development. An international registration (IR) designating Greece enjoys the same advantage of this procedural mechanism: Greece falls within a single administrative process along with several other member states and, consequently, the applicant may simply and cost-effectively obtain trade mark protection in the Geek jurisdiction as if he had applied for a domestic trade mark. Too good to be true?

The report of the Technical Expert Group on Patent Law Issues, led by RA Mashelkar, was resubmitted to the Union Ministry for Trade and Commerce in March 2009. It was first submitted in December 2006 and was withdrawn for review owing to some technical inaccuracies in the Report.

The boundary between activities that fall within the experimental exemption and activities that are instead reserved to the patentee has always been fluid. A particularly topical question concerns the activities linked to obtaining marketing approval for the generic version of a medicinal product that is covered by a patent.

Due to the recent debates over the rights of IP owners and public discontent, the Intellectual Property Corporation of Malaysia (MyIPO) has reviewed the Intellectual Property Laws of Malaysia and will soon be implementing amendments to resolve matters. The review and amendments will affect the Copyright Act, Trade Marks Act, Patents Act and Industrial Design Act as well as the Layout Design of Integrated Circuits Act and the Geographical Indication Act. Major amendments will include: