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The Italian Constitutional Court issued a decision (Number 112/2008) last April relating to the legal situation of lawsuit proceedings which are now under appeal and which were originally heard – during the first instance – by ordinary courts, that is according to the rules that applied before the entry into force of Decree Law Number 168/2003 of 2003, which created dedicated IP courts responsible for hearing IP matters.

On April 3 2008, the Intellectual Property Office of the Philippines (IPOPhil) held the first of its two scheduled stakeholders' forum for the year. The objective of the forum was to provide speedy and effective legal remedies to improve the quality of the decisions rendered and to promote the Bureau of Legal Affairs (BLA), the adjudication division of IPOPhil, as a forum of choice and to promote mediation as an alternative means to resolve disputes. The forum was attended by over a hundred practitioners, and presided by the director-general himself, Atty Adrian Cristobal Jr Some of the suggestions given by the IP practitioners are below.

The Intellectual Property Office of New Zealand (IPONZ) recently completed a review of its practice of raising objections based on morality considerations, and has just released new guidelines that may cause difficulties for some biotechnology patent applications.

Back in the 19th century the countries signing the Paris Convention agreed that designations contradicting morals or capable of insulting religious feelings should not be registered as trade marks. It is very rare if ever that people apply for obscene trade marks. It may happen that a word trade mark in one country has a neutral meaning but while being pronounced and heard by people in another country has quite a different meaning. In that case, there is a question.

In Malaysia an effective method of enforcement that can be used by the proprietor of a trade mark is to apply for what is known as a trade description order (TDO) in the High Court. This application is made pursuant to the Trade Descriptions Act 1972. The order granted declares that the particular mark named in the TDO that infringes the applicant's trade mark is a false trade description.

In a recent decision, dated February 14 2008 (BGH I ZR 69/04), the German Federal Supreme Court (BGH) referred three questions to the European Court of Justice for a preliminary ruling on the interpretation of Article 14 (1) of EC/510/06 which concerns the protection of geographical indications and designations of origin.

On April 10 2007, the famous French luxury brand Louis Vuitton Malletier filed an action with the Beijing First Intermediate People's Court against Mr Wang, owner of design patent registration no 02367907.7, for his unauthorized copying of its trade marks: (Louis Vuitton's corresponding Chinese mark), and , and all registered in Class 18 in respect of, among others: travelling bags, women's handbags and shopping bags for application on bags, the subject matter of Wang's design patent registration. Wang's registered design patent consists of the shape of a handbag.

A recent Full Federal Court case has recognized that patents filed before 2001 in Australia are unlikely to be found invalid for obviousness where the field of endeavour was not practised in Australia.

The DR-CAFTA brought many economic changes to El Salvador. It also changed the business environment between El Salvador and the US. As a consequence of the agreement, trade mark law also underwent important changes, particularly regarding times and procedures.

The Canadian Trade-marks Office is again seeking comment on possible modernization of the Canadian Trade-marks Act. These efforts are clearly the precursor to further consideration of adoption of the Singapore Treaty and the Madrid Protocol.