Search results for

In 1993, the European Community and Hungary concluded an agreement on the reciprocal protection and control of the names of wines. In order to protect the Hungarian geographical indication Tokajj as of March 2007 the agreement prohibited the use of the name Tocai for the famous Italian wine produced in the Friuli region, east of Venice.

On February 15 the Industrial Property Office of the Czech Republic received comments on the registrability of the published indication Euro Region propag, applied for by a Czech town. The indication was filed in classes 9, 16 and 4 as a colour combined trade mark. The indication is created by the word elements Euro, Region and propag, placed one above another in an oblong field, where the letter O in the work Region is created by a circle of blue stars, corresponding to the symbol of European Community.

Emma Barraclough, London and Brussels

Shahnaz Mahmud, London

With Vietnam's impending entry into the WTO, there have been many recent developments in intellectual property law, including:

One year after fining AstraZeneca €60 million, the European Commission has finally published its decision in a limited version proposed by AstraZeneca.

The Irish government recently announced the introduction of a new Privacy Bill which will protect all Irish citizens from the invasion of their right to privacy. The new Bill creates the tort of violation of privacy, which is committed where any person wilfully and without lawful authority violates the privacy of an individual. The tort is actionable without proof of financial loss and applies to newspapers and magazines, broadcasting organizations and (to the extent that it is technologically possible to prove) the internet. In this month's article we take a look at the controversial draft Bill.

According to Turkish IP law, there is no distinction whatsoever between famous, or highly reputed marks, and well-known marks. The law simply refers to well-known marks as one single concept.

Law 23/2006, of July 7, which amends the consolidation of the 1996 Copyright Act, was published on July 8 2006 in the Official Gazette of the Spanish state.

China's economy is fast developing - and many people fear that IP protection cannot keep up. International investors are concerned about effective enforcement, while domestic companies seek a strong environment for developing IP rights and negotiating on issues such as standards. MIP and Finnegan Henderson jointly hosted a roundtable discussion in Beijing last month to discuss how these issues can be addressed. Read the full, unabridged transcript exclusively here on managingip.com.