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• German pharma company Bayer suffered a blow when the antitrust authority in Germany fined it €10.3 million on April 28 for fixing the price of Aspirin and other over-the-counter medications.

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Peter Ollier, Hong Kong

Although the law used to enable Customs to enforce IP rights in Mexico, this year has seen a major advance in the fight against counterfeiters and pirates. In January and following intense work by federal enforcement authorities and IP owners, the brand new early alert anti-counterfeit system was initiated. The first alerts have so far led to 16 seizures of counterfeits.

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.

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 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.

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.

Litigating to protect your IP rights can be a multi-million dollar exercise. Emma Barraclough outlines some funding options to ease the financial pain

Peter Ollier, Hong Kong