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Australia TRADE MARK PROSECUTION Tier 1 Davies Collison Cave Griffith Hack Phillips Ormonde & Fitzpatrick Spruson & Ferguson Tier 2 F B Rice & Co Freehills Shelston IP Watermark Tier 3 Allens Arthur Robinson Blake Dawson Waldron Corrs Chambers Westgarth Tier 4 Baker & McKenzie Clayton Utz Deacons Halford & Co Madderns Mallesons Stephen Jacques Minter Ellison Pizzeys Wray & Associates Tier 5 Callinan Lawrie Cullen & Co Fisher Adams Kelly

China's Trade Mark Office is the busiest in the world. While this demonstrates that foreign companies and local businesses are seeking proper protection for their IP rights, the backlog of applications is mounting. Peter Ollier considers what the problem means for trade mark owners

Peter Ollier, Hong Kong

Eklavya Gupte, London

Emma Barraclough, London

Emma Barraclough, Geneva

Peter Ollier, Hong Kong, and Emma Barraclough, London

Owners of foreign language trade marks need to exercise particular caution when contemplating the expansion of their brands into the United States marketplace. US trade mark law and language issues create certain concerns that specifically relate to the availability of a foreign language mark in the US.

On January 12 2007, the Court of Appeal handed down its judgment in a long-running dispute between Special Effects and L'Oreal as to whether the same grounds could be adopted in infringement or invalidity proceedings after they had already been unsuccessfully deployed in an opposition action. The High Court had held that once a mark had overcome an opposition and been accepted for registration, the opponent was estopped from attacking the mark a second time either by infringement or invalidation proceedings. This decision was overturned by the Court of Appeal, which held that Registry proceedings did not involve any cause of action which could form the basis of an estoppel and that the Trade Marks Act 1994, which provided for the co-existence of both opposition and invalidation actions, meant that opposition actions were by their nature non-final.

Sweden's legislators and judicial authorities are facing a delicate problem in connection with file sharing – that is, with uploading and downloading of copyrighted material from the internet. The problem is that the existing legislation regulating the issue is ignored by the vast majority of people whom it is principally intended to govern.