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Under Australian law it is possible to make post grant amendments to a patent either before the Commissioner of Patents, or in the Federal Court of Australia. Typically an application for amendment to the Federal Court is lodged when the patentee is about to commence infringement proceedings on the basis of advice that amendments are required to correct defects or to limit the relevance of prior art. In a recent case, Gambro Pty Ltd v Fresenius Medical Care South East Asia Pty Ltd, amendments were sought to limit the field of invention to the area of real interest fluids for dialysis and related procedures in order to strengthen the patentee´ s position in a cross claim for invalidity.

Infringement: are overseas sales relevant?

As yet another supermarket challenges a brand owner over grey goods, Sandra McDonald analyzes the results of a new survey on the attitude of businesses towards exhaustion

Ingrid Hering, London

In today’s fast-moving markets, successful new products and services are the key to success. And securing patents is an essential element of product and process development. But how do you avoid patent infringement? Are you wasting valuable research funds on products already protected by patents? Could you be missing out on lucrative licensing opportunities?

The Finnish Supreme Administrative Court has issued a decision in a case where the applicant for a patent had in 1997, by virtue of Article 27 and Article 70 (7) of the TRIPs Agreement, amended the claims of an international patent application filed in 1993 to cover product protection for pharmaceuticals.

As the sale of so-called "similar" drugs (SDs) increases in Mexico, the Mexican PTO seems to be as confused as Mexican consumers, and has not taken any measures to stop acts of unfair competition which affect the prestige of the pharmaceutical industry´ s trade marks and products.

Rouse in new venture

The recent decision in Kimberley-Clark v Proctor & Gamble (Court of Appeal, November 24 1999) clarifies that the UK Court retains discretion to refuse patent amendment applications.

There has been a steady flow of interesting trade mark disputes in India in the past year. Pravin Anand, of Anand & Anand in New Delhi, reviews the most important cases