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Australia PATENT PROSECUTION Tier 1 Davies Collison Cave Griffith Hack Phillips Ormonde & Fitzpatrick Spruson & Ferguson Tier 2 F B Rice & Co Shelston IP Watermark Tier 3 Blake Dawson Waldron Freehills Madderns Wray & Associates Tier 4 Allens Arthur Robinson Callinan Lawrie Cullen & Co Halford & Co Mallesons Stephen Jacques Pizzeys

Plans to implement the European Patent Litigation Agreement - touted as the answer to Europe's patent dispute woes - are in trouble. Emma Barraclough looks at the cause of the impasse and asks what the European Commission will do next

Emma Barraclough, London

Shahnaz Mahmud, New York

Peter Ollier, Hong Kong

Commissioner Sang-Woo Jun of the Korean Intellectual Property Office (KIPO) announced that KIPO was able to average 9.8 months for examining each patent application in 2006. In 2005, the US averaged 21.1 months, Europe 24 months and Japan 26 months. In comparison, KIPO is able to complete examinations at least 11 months faster.

Companies spend a lot of money buying and selling usage rights to software and related services. As such, various types of software licensing agreements are becoming ever more important for both IT companies and their customers. Despite the fact that contract amounts are often relatively large in relation to the company's other finances and that the product to be delivered often has an activity-critical function for the customer, it is extremely common that licensing agreements and the associated documentation leave much to be desired with respect to legibility, appropriate adjustments and so forth. This is especially the case when the software licensing agreements are not entirely standardized in their form, much less business-specific.

New Zealand for the most part has rather antiquated intellectual property legislation. The Trade Marks Act was in force for nearly 50 years before being replaced in 2002 and the Patents Act has been in force for more than 50 years. In a flurry of activity, two IP-related pieces of legislation were passed in late 2006 and there are several other draft bills being considered.

Ever since EU Regulation 1768/92 implemented supplementary protection certificates (SPCs) in the European Union, the unclear wording of various provisions of the Regulation has led to numerous decisions by courts throughout Europe.

On December 14 2006, the Court of First Instance (CFI) upheld that Community trade mark applications representing deer heads with the word "Venado" were confusingly similar to earlier trade marks consisting of a deer's head with a cross surrounded by a halo and the word "Jägermeister".