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MIP, in association with Finnegan Henderson, invited three brand owners as well as lawyers from the US, China and Germany to discuss how to protect and manage brands internationally. Topics covered included famous marks, new types of marks, the Madrid Protocol, transliterations and other means of protecting brands

On February 16 2007 the Lower District Court of Düsseldorf decided a trade mark case in an interlocutory injunction procedure regarding the use of the trade mark Oral Fixation for mint products.

At the second annual IPTEC meeting, held last month, technology licensors and licensees got together to share experiences and discuss business opportunities. James Nurton reports from Cannes, France

Article 10 of the Enforcement Directive (Directive 2004/48/EC) provides corrective measures to be taken with regard to goods that have been found to infringe an intellectual property right. Those measures include:

In this case, car maker Opel discovered in Germany scale models of Autec that reproduced the Opel Astra V8 Coupe car shape and the Opel Z logotype. Opel owns trade marks in Germany for cars and toys and consequently regarded these scale models as infringing its trade marks. The case was brought before the court and the German judge asked the Court of Justice of the European Communities (ECJ) (1) whether the Opel Z logotype on toys could constitute trade mark use and (2) whether the toy manufacturer was legitimate in raising the necessary indication of a characteristic of the product to avoid trade mark infringement.

Traditionally, Australian courts have apparently been reluctant to grant interlocutory injunctions for patent infringement, particularly in pharmaceutical cases. However, the Federal Court has recently acknowledged a change in this trend. In Merck & Co Inc v GenRx Pty Ltd [2006] FCA 1407, the Federal Court considered an interlocutory injunction application by Merck to stop a subsidiary of Apotex from importing an alendronic acid compound covered by one of Merck's patents.

In October 2006, Senator Marina Riofrio proposed a bill to the National Congress aiming to introduce into the Argentine trade mark legislation a specific regulation for collective and certification trade marks. While these are not forbidden by current provisions, they are not expressly regulated in national legislation.

The European Patent Office (EPO) has recently published its statistics for opposition and appellate activities in 2005.

Effective patent enforcement and the scope of copyright protection proved the main topics for discussion at a debate organized by MIP in London last month

China is under pressure from IP owners and national governments to tackle IP crime. At a counterfeiting conference in Geneva, Zhang Qin, SIPO deputy director, told Emma Barraclough what the country is doing and how rights owners can help to protect their rights. He also explained why the government is not getting the credit it deserves for tackling infringement and why there needs to be a balance between competing interests in enforcement