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The judicial branch of Taiwan has published two sets of rules drafted to clarify Article 38 of the Act of Trial Procedures in IP Dispute Cases promulgated on March 28 2007. One is the Enforcement Rules of the Act and the other provides guidelines for trial.

On November 23 2007, Commercial Court Number 1 of Bilbao gave its judgment in the proceedings between the famous architect Santiago Calatrava and the Town Council of Bilbao and other companies (Vizcaína de Edificaciones, SA and Lariam 95, SL).

The General Council of the WTO agreed in 2003 to waive the requirements of Article 31(f) of the TRIPs Agreement, in order to facilitate the import of pharmaceutical drugs to countries with no or insufficient manufacturing capacity. Singapore has accepted the amendments to the TRIPs Agreement and amendments have been proposed to the Singapore Patents Act to conform the TRIPs Agreement.

A judicial storm swept through the streets of Moscow and almost buried Venezia under the waves of attacks by a Russian owner of a similar trade mark. The story began when a Russian entrepreneur registered the trade mark Venezi in many classes including classes 41 and 43 covering restaurants. The trade mark was registered in block letters in Cyrillics in black and white. That was back in 2002. Years later another entrepreneur opened a restaurant under the name of Viaggio Italiano Venezia in the centre of Moscow. The owner of the trade mark filed a suit in court demanding the restaurateur to remove the confusingly similar designation from the signboard, menu, bills, etc. The court of first instance rejected the claims of the trade mark owner, in part because the plaintiff did not introduce on the market goods labelled with the Venezi trade mark that would fall under classes 41 and 43.

Traditionally in New Zealand claims directed to methods of diagnosis (MOD) have been allowable. This is based on well-established case law (for example, Bio-Digital Sciences Incorporated's Application [1973] 21 RPC 668) and on guidelines issued by the Intellectual Property Office of New Zealand (IPONZ) in October 1998.

On December 3 2007, the Bureau of Legal Affairs (BLA), the adjudication bureau of the Intellectual Property Office (IPPhil) presented to a public hearing proposed amendments to the rules and regulations on administrative complaints for violation of intellectual property laws. The objective of the amendments is to speed up the prosecution by the BLA of IP violation cases, for example, infringement, unfair competition, false designation of origin, false or fraudulent declaration.

In the Malaysian case of Godrej Sara Lee Ltd v Siah Teong Teck & Anor (Part 2) [2007] 7 MLJ 164, the High Court dealt with the issue of non-use of a trade mark and its removal from the register.

On January 15 the first cooperation protocol was signed between the High Commissioner's Office for the fight against counterfeits and the Italian National Centre for Informatics in Public Administration (CNIPA), to give further impetus to the national anti-counterfeiting strategies.

For many years, the Mexican Trade Mark Office (MTO) has been accepting letters of consent from the owners of prior trade mark registrations in order to overcome a reference cited as anticipation in the prosecution of a trade mark application that can be considered as similar or even identical.

As noted in our update in last month's issue, the Knesset (Israel's parliament) recently enacted the Copyright Law 2007 "Copyright Law", which establishes a comprehensive statutory copyright regime and replaces legislation enacted in 1911 and 1924. The new law will come into effect in May 2008. In addition to the changes in respect of copyright ownership and moral rights discussed in last month's update, other significant changes include: