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The snappily titled The Performances (Moral Rights etc) Regulations 2006 will help us all answer the question "Who is that singer?" and avoid the comment "Oi, that's my recording you're mucking about with!"

The United Arab Emirates (UAE) government has stepped up its action against software piracy. Over the past year, raids were successfully carried out and lead to a number of people being arrested, large numbers of PCs and pirated software confiscated and pirated goods destroyed, and fines imposed on various individuals and companies. This is reassuring for companies wanting to enter the UAE.

The Republic Act No. 9168 (known as the Plant Variety Protection Act 2002) took effect on July 19 2002. The aim of the legislation was to protect and secure exclusive rights for breeders of new plant varieties. As of February 1 2006, the Plant Variety Protection Office has received 39 applications for Certificates of Plant Variety Protection, the breakdown of which is as follows:

The National .es Domain Names Plan approved by Order ITC/1542/2005 on May 19, provides that Spain should set up a system for the friendly settlement of disputes arising in relation .es domains between the owner of that domain and a third party claiming lawful interests in it.

On January 25 2006, the Mexican Law of Industrial Property (LIP) was amended. Among other changes, these included a new infringement cause which provides as follows:

Russian patent law does not allow the co-existence of an invention patent and a utility model patent if their priorities coincide. If such parallel applications have been filed the applicant has to choose which patent he wants to have. If a utility model patent has been granted and an invention patent has later been granted the earlier issued patent is automatically cancelled.

In a development that could have far reaching consequences, the Indian Patent Office ruled against Novartis' patent application for Gleevec, an anti-cancer drug. This decision marks the beginning of judicial scrutiny of India's new product patent law. If the Indian Patent Office fails to analyze the intricate provisions of law more carefully, as in this case, research-based pharmaceutical companies may stay away from the Indian market.

China's CNNIC (China Internet Network Information Centre) Domain Name Dispute Resolution Policy has been superseded by a new policy that came into force on March 17 2006. There are a number of important changes.

"2P or not 2P" was scribbled in a coin phone box in the UK in the 1990s and has recently been the title of an article in The Guardian on whether or not the 1p and 2p coins should be taken out of circulation in the UK. While having a different connotation, the same question can equally be asked about the IP rights for plants in Europe. The two types of IP rights for plants which co-exist in Europe, patents and plant variety rights (PVR), overlap in their scope of protection to a considerable extent, although the original intention had been to keep these two Ps separate.

Moratoriums on commercial cultivation of genetically modified (GM) crops in Australia should be lifted, according to a report prepared by the Agriculture and Food Policy Reference Group (AFPRG) and submitted to the Minister for Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry in February 2006.