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James Nurton, London

James Nurton, London

Tom Thomson, executive director, Coalition for Intellectual Property Rights

Up until recently, in the UAE, an agency agreement had to be registered at the Commercial Agencies Register at the Ministry of Commerce and Industry to be enforceable. This had created a lot of difficulties in the past for foreign companies in terminating agreements where the local agent was not performing under the agreement, as the commercial agency law provided substantial protection to the commercial agents, especially in the context of termination. For example, if the principal terminated an unlimited term commercial agency without cause, the principal was obliged to compensate the agent.

Act 29/2006, of July 26, on Guarantees for and Rational Use of Medicinal and Health Products, which supersedes and repeals the former Medicinal Products Act 1990, was published in the Official State Gazette on July 27 2006. The new Act amends Patents Act Article 52.1, which provides for the exceptions to patent rights, that is cases in which a patent is not effective. The wording is:

One of the most frequent obstacles that the prosecution of a Mexican trade mark application has to confront is that it may be objected to by the examiner for being descriptive or not sufficiently distinctive to be registered as a trade mark, or that it is indicative of the goods or services that it intends to protect. These types of objection are included in the Mexican Industrial Property Law; however the number of official actions objecting to trade marks for these reasons has notoriously increased recently.

The launch of .eu has led to more than 2 million people and businesses registering new domain names in Europe. Detailed rules were put in place to protect IP owners, so James Nurton asks: what lessons can future domain name registries learn from the .eu experience?

Emma Barraclough, London

On August 29 2006, the Vietnamese government promulgated Decree 88/2006/ND-CP on Business Registration. Decree 88 is notable in regard to IP because it contains provisions on trade names. In Vietnam, it is common for many companies to have the same name and some local companies have adopted well-known foreign trade marks as part of their trade name. Specifically, Decree 88 addresses these problems by providing as follows:

Individuals interested in creating an online forum to voice criticism about a particular company's product or service offering often register domain names which incorporate a company's trade mark to be used as so-called gripe sites. These individuals typically claim that their use of a third party's trade mark as part of a domain name constitutes a fair use of that trade mark, thereby creating a legitimate non-commercial interest for the domain name registrant in owning the domain name at issue.