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The Commercial Court of Lisbon, the main Portuguese court dealing with patent matters, has recently handed down a decision, backed up after appeal by the Appeal Court of Lisbon, that is a serious warning about the quality of translations filed for the validation of European patents as a literal interpretation of bad translated claims can affect the scope of the protection.

It is not sufficient only to register a trade mark in Turkey but also use it in the Turkish market.

In Sweden, universities and other higher education institutions (HEIs) are classed as government agencies, and their main task as stipulated by law is to contribute to research and education. Like all Swedish government agencies, HEIs must abide by the Principle of Public Access to Official Documents. The conflict of interest between, on one hand, the need for increased commercialization of research results and therefore keeping certain results confidential to fulfil the novelty requirement in patent law and, on the other hand, the ambition to promote free research, and the publication of research results becomes obvious. How can this conflict be resolved?

Many companies make large investments in R&D and marketing that result in intangible investments. However, although most companies have well-defined models for running projects and making purchasing and product development decisions, they often have only vague methods for valuing their intangible assets.

Under the Singapore Trade Marks Act, a trade mark application may be opposed on the ground that it is made in bad faith. The question is, when does bad faith arise, and are there any steps an applicant can take to prevent his mark from being refused on this ground? In a recent High Court case, the issue of bad faith was discussed at some length.

Article 31 of the Patent Act, which previously limited the scope of patentable plant inventions to "a variety of plant that reproduces itself asexually," has been abolished by recent amendments to the Patent Act, which became effective on October 1 2006.

On September 22 2006, the Italian Council of Ministers approved a new law decree that contains interesting new elements regarding intellectual property in Italy.

The Indian music industry has grown rapidly over the years and has become a major business in India along with the country's famous film industry colloquially known as Bollywood. As a result, copyright cases that affect the industry are closely watched. A recent case is Super Cassettes Industries Ltd v Chanda Cassettes Pvt Ltd 2006 (33) PTC (Del), where the Delhi High Court attempted to frame a test of balance of convenience in a copyright infringement case. The appeal was against the decision of the Additional District Judge denying the plaintiffs an interim injunction.

In a recent judgment (C-431/04), the European Court of Justice (ECJ) has gone against the Opinion of the Advocate General and ruled that the German courts were correct in rejecting an application for a supplementary protection certificate (SPC) for the chemotherapeutic Gliadel.

By an amendment to the Patents Act earlier this year, Finland became one of the 14 countries where the Patent Law Treaty (PLT) has entered into force.