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A company that has a trade mark filing in place in a foreign jurisdiction has multiple options when considering an expansion of its trade mark rights into the United States. Specifically, US trade mark law provides several mechanisms pursuant to which a foreign trade mark owner can use the priority established by a foreign trade mark filing when making a filing in the United States.

In a recent judgment concerning interim measures (case Ö 566-06 – Roche Aktiebolag v Orifarm AB – June 9 2006), the Swedish Supreme Court ruled it objectively necessary for a parallel trader to relabel an imported pharmaceutical product with another company's registered trade mark in order to gain effective access to the Swedish market. This exception to the exclusive rights provided by a trade mark was found justified with respect to patient safety and resistance from consumers to a product marketed under a different name to that marketed by the trade mark proprietor.

As the use of slogans to promote and build awareness of goods and services becomes a universal phenomenon, companies who use slogans and have them splashed across their products or at their place of business have become more aware of the need to protect the slogans as trade marks, in addition to protecting their traditional marks. This is because consumers are now more aware of the various slogans being used and it can be argued that slogans can be considered to be part of the brand itself.

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.

The issue of improving the Russian legislation in the field of intellectual property has long been on the agenda. Ever since the new versions of IP laws were adopted in 2002-2003 (the Russian Copyright law was amended in 2004) there was much discussion about further improvements. In fact, the amendments of three years ago did not solve all the problems though they did make some good patches over the legislative gaps. The work continued and by 2006 there were prepared numerous proposals for the patent and trade mark laws.

The Intellectual Property Office of the Philippines, IPOPhil, officially launched its new service called TM Online on April 25 2006. After encountering some initial problems, TM Online became available to the public in May 2006. This project is not new. As early as November 26 2004, IPOPhil issued Office Order No. 25 Series of 2004, amended by Office Order No. 42, providing for the rules on the trade mark electronic filing system. However, its implementation was deferred following demand from practitioners for clearer rules. The following are the requirements for using TM Online:

Business method patents, granted for particular business models unique to a particular organization, have been the subject of mounting interest and controversy among business leaders in the digital media, internet and e-commerce sector.

Following a major amendment to China's Trade Mark Law in October 2001, prior to it becoming a member of the WTO, China intends to amend its Trade Mark Law further. A draft was published on April 18 2006 for public consultation. Some of the proposed changes are as follows: