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Apple Corps, the Beatles' own record label, is to appeal a ruling handed down by the High Court of England and Wales on May 8 which cleared Apple Computer of breaching a trade mark co-existence agreement by using its Apple logo on its iTunes music downloading service.

The 2001 EU copyright directive has still not been implemented in France following disputes between rights owners and users. Laëtitia Bénard and Alexandre Rudoni examine the three issues that have caused most concern and consider what happens now

James Nurton, Toronto

Trade mark owners who applied for .eu domain names during the sunrise period should know whether they have successfully obtained their desired domains before the end of this month.

Once again the Swedish legislator has looked into abolishing the traditional teacher's exception, which gives Swedish university researchers and teachers full ownership and control of their research results. The inquiry addresses a few interesting questions, and was motivated by the finding that not enough research results from Swedish universities are used, either commercially or any other way that benefits the surrounding community.

In order to protect their valuable brands from infringement and dilution, American companies often engage in a diligent monitoring of the marketplace for third party uses of marks that may be confusingly similar to their brands. These monitoring programmes typically include a review of every domain name registration which incorporates a formative of the company's particular trade mark. Aggressive trade mark owners will take enforcement measures against third party owners of domain names incorporating formatives of the mark at issue. These aggressive tactics can often lead the trade mark owner into conflict with a foreign entity using the identical mark and owning a domain name registration which incorporates such mark.

On April 7 2006, Dan Brown and The Da Vinci Code were cleared of infringing copyright in The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail (HBHG). The case was brought by Michael Baigent and Richard Leigh, authors of HBHG, against Random House (the publisher of both books).

Emma Barraclough, Hong Kong

Russian law does not allow different medicines to be registered under the same name, and a single medicine cannot be registered under different names. However, medicines that comprise the same basic pharmaceutical ingredients might have different fillers (auxiliary substances) and different dosages, and so should be named differently.

The Act transposing the European Directive on the legal protection of designs (98/71/EC of October 13 1998) to national Spanish law entered into force on July 9 2003.