Search results for

Since OHIM opened, it has received more than half a million applications for Community trade marks. Thousands have been rejected, and thousands more opposed prompting frustrated would-be trade mark owners to go to the European courts. How can they maximize their chances of winning? Emma Barraclough finds out

A partially valid patent refers to a situation where some claims in a granted patent are found valid while other (typically broader) claims are found invalid, for example, during infringement proceedings.

With regard to pending marketing authorization applications, the register of the National Agency for Medicines (NAM) has so far disclosed only the filing date, the number of the applicants and applications and the active ingredient to a third party. In accordance with a recent decision from the Supreme Administrative Court, a third party is now also entitled to obtain, upon request, information on the identity of the applicant and the type of the application before the marketing authorization is granted.

The last decade has seen many bright rays of industrial and intellectual developments within Indian industry. The Sensex has been soaring to record levels leading to a great transformation of India's financial scenario. Therefore it is imperative that one of the fastest growing economies in Asia also feels the necessity to protect its precious IP leading to a doubling of the number of patent and copyright applications in the past two years.

On April 4 2007 a Supplementary Order paper to the Major Events Management Bill inserted a new subpart 5 into Part 2, which deals with ambush marketing.

The German Federal Patent Court recently upheld the first instance decision of the German Patent and Trade Mark Office (GPTO) judging the word marks Quellgold and Goldquell to be confusingly similar in the sense of paragraph 9 section 1 No 2 of the German Trade Mark Act.

In April 2007, the National Working Group for IPR Protection launched the Action Plan on IPR Protection 2007 to outline the substantive IP measures that China will take in 2007.

Even in the first Austrian Patent Law of 1897, there was a special provision that the Court had to terminate the effect of an interlocutory injunction if the defendant offered an adequate security. The Court had only to judge whether the amount offered was adequate. Over the years, people concerned complained that it was impossible to enforce a preliminary injunction since defendants nearly always paid the security as it was generally set at an affordable price. This unsatisfactory situation remained until a major patent law reform in 1988 when this stringent provision was changed into a possibility. The Court could now on its own finding terminate a preliminary injunction for an adequate security by considering the specific circumstances. Since then, in rare cases the effect of preliminary injunctions was terminated for a specific act, but not generally (for example to allow the construction of certain buildings to be finished).

The High Court has recently attempted to clarify the extremely complicated area of law in Australia dealing with the overlap between the Copyright and Designs Acts.

The government of Kenya, mindful of its obligations under the TRIPS Agreement, published the Counterfeit Goods Bill back in 2005. The Bill would provide for direct, effective action against counterfeiters by a specialized agency. However, its progress towards the statute book has been impeded by prolonged recesses of Parliament and preparations for general elections, to be held later in 2007.