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Geneva: Angola became the 138th contracting state of the Patent Cooperation Treaty (PCT) when it deposited its instrument of accession at WIPO on September 27. The Treaty will enter into force for Angola on December 27 2007.

IP owners have been given more clarity about the scope of protection for design rights after a UK court ruling on air freshener cans

What impact will September's Microsoft ruling have on IP owners in Europe? Helen Davison reports

Last month French politicians finally agreed to ratify the London Agreement. Gwilym Roberts and James Pitchford explain what it means for patent applicants

In the battle to cut demand for fakes, some public education campaigns are more successful that others. LiliAna Andreano assesses the results

The head of Ethiopia's IP Office explains why developing countries should embrace IP rights

With a backlog of applications threatening to overwhelm examiners, large parts of the patent community furious about its recently implemented rules package and two lawsuits pending against it, the USPTO is facing unprecedented criticism. Eileen McDermott considers why practitioners are angry. Plus: Director Jon Dudas responds to the critics

In tandem with the rapid development of the internet and ever-increasing internet penetration rates worldwide, peer-to-peer (P2P) file-sharing networks have drawn significant attention from computer users around the world. However, while the general public enjoys the convenience brought by file-sharing techniques, copyright holders claim that P2P operators, which set up networks or provide computer software that allow subscribers to download and share files without obtaining authorization from the copyright holders, violate the Copyright Act.

In this recent case in Singapore, the applicants, Siemens AG, sought to invalidate the mark Maglev, owned by a Taiwanese company, Sunonwealth Electric Machine Industry Co. Ltd (the respondents). Siemens alleged, among other things, that the respondents' mark is devoid of any distinctive character, has become generic in the trade, and was applied for in bad faith.

In order to prove that a trade mark is famous it is necessary to show, among other things, that ordinary customers associate the mark with a high quality of the goods or services on which it is used.