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The EPO is the latest patent office to sign up to a patent prosecution highway. But do these schemes offer more advantages to applicants or examiners? Emma Barraclough reports

Recently in Polwood Pty Ltd v Foxworth Pty Ltd [2008] FCAFC 9, the Full Federal Court had reason to consider the operation of our joint inventorship provisions.

Industrial designs is the smallest of the product lines in the Canadian Intellectual Property Office and has traditionally played a subsidiary role in CIPO to patents and trade-marks. Prior to CIPO implementing major fee increases in January 2004, the industrial design branch was unable to generate sufficient revenue to even cover its operating expenditures. Further, frequent changes in the director of the industrial design branch in recent years have resulted in a lack of leadership and stability at the head of the branch.

Supplementary protection certificates (SPCs) as provided by Regulation 1768/92/EEC can extend the lifetime of a patent protecting medicines for up to five years. SPCs were devised to compensate for the reduced duration of these patents caused by the lengthy procedures involved in obtaining marketing authorization before the launch of a new medicinal product.

The increase in globalization over the past few years has heightened the importance of intellectual property laws throughout the Central American and Caribbean region, leading to the modernization of the legal framework and providing greater protection to IP rights.

The Austrian Supreme Court had found in several judgments that a trade mark owner is entitled to the cancellation of a domain registration that infringed the rights of the trade mark owner. The Supreme Court's reasoning was that the risk of recurring infringement could not be avoided solely by changing the content of the website as the content could easily be changed again. This jurisprudence was heavily criticized on the ground that stopping the infringement does not necessarily require the cancellation of the domain registration.

Eileen McDermott, New York

Emma Barraclough, London

Weaker trade marks, such as those with a descriptive element, should benefit from a narrower scope of protection than highly distinctive marks, following a ruling in the UK last month

The US Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit last month upheld summary judgment in a trade mark case that may have far-reaching implications for the doctrine of famous marks