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As IP owners begin to pay for their first batch of renewals for 10-year old Community trade marks, many are finding their budgets under increasing pressure. Emma Barraclough talked to in-house counsel to get their top 10 tips for keeping IP portfolios in good shape and avoiding spiralling costs

Emma Barraclough, London

Shahnaz Mahmud, Rio de Janeiro

Emma Barraclough, London

The Verified Rights Owner Programme (VeRO) is eBay's attempt to win over disgruntled rights owners. It provides them with an alternative to suing eBay when they find allegedly infringing goods offered for sale or auction on its site. Participants in the VeRO programme instead send eBay a Notice of Infringement form, specifying the allegedly infringing listing and identifying the trade mark, copyright, patent or registered design right which is said to be infringed. eBay will then remove the offending listing. So far so good for the rights owners. Unfortunately for them however a recent decision has held that such Notices of Infringement can constitute groundless threats of infringement. This can leave rights owners open to injunction applications to restrain such threats and claims for damages. Rights owners should therefore think carefully before making use of the VeRO programme.

Researchers at universities and polytechnics in Finland have previously had lots of freedom relating to inventions and IP rights. This means that all inventions made by researchers in universities belonged to the researcher himself. This is about to change. A new law, the Right to University Inventions Act, is coming into force on January 1 2007. This Act brings some radical changes into how IP rights matters are handled in Finnish universities.

As reported recently in MIP Week, Botswana acceded to the Madrid Protocol on September 5 2006. It will, however, only become a party to the Madrid Protocol with effect from December 5 2006.

The prosecution of patent applications in Argentina normally takes from six to 10 years depending on the technical field involved. The Patent Office (INPI) has reacted to this reality by allowing a second fast track.

The difficulties likely to be faced by businesses that seek trade mark protection for three-dimensional signs which have a functional feature were revisited in a recent Opinion of Advocate General Leger in the European Court of Justice (ECJ) in Dyson Ltd v Registrar (Case C-321/03).

This was an opposition brought by Mark Richard Jeffery and Guy Anthony (the opponents), owners of the registered mark Jeffery-West in Class 25, against Nautical Concept (the applicant) who applied to register jWEST as a trade mark in Class 25 for similar goods (shoes and footwear).