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The Austrian Supreme court recently ruled on the duration of supplementary protection certificates (SPCs) based on so-called old Austrian national patents, which were filed prior to December 1 1984. These patents had a duration of 18 years from the day of laying open to public inspection (and at least 20 years from the date of filing).

Artists' resale right schemes, often also called droit de suite, have been a part of the law of a number of European countries since the 1920s. However, the disparity between those national systems that did recognize a resale right and the lack of a resale right in other member states prompted the European Commission to adopt harmonizing measures in the form of EU Directive 2001/84/EC on the resale rights of authors of original works of art. The object of the Directive is to confer the same benefits on authors/creators of graphic or plastic art, such as pictures, collages, paintings, sculptures and engravings, as other creators of artistic works who benefit from successive exploitations of their works. The Directive was passed on September 27 2001 and member states had until January 1 2006 to transpose it into domestic law.

A number of recent Australian cases have narrowed the ability of traders to claim a monopoly in a pure colour for use as a trade mark.

On January 1 2006 a new obligation law introducing non-material damages in Croatian court procedures came into force. The law for the first time provides legal entities with an opportunity to claim non-material damages based on injury to their personal rights in court procedures.

The National Copyright Administration of the People's Republic of China (NCAC) has launched a public consultation on the imposition of royalties on Karaoke establishments for use of musical works and music videos in their business. The NCAC has generally approved the centralized collection of royalties by the Music Copyright Society of China () and the China Audio & Video Collective Administration Association (in preparation) (). The proposed tariff is Rmb12 ($1.50) for one room for one day. The consultation will close on September 20 2006.

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.

In the previous issue of Managing Intellectual Property, the implementation of the Bolar exemption in Ireland was discussed. It was stated that the exemption in Ireland only applies to experimental activities for generic drugs, excluding new medicinal products.

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.

Emma Barraclough, London

Do you know a DNS from a DIG? What's the difference between a domainer and a typosquatter? If you want to protect your brands on the internet, then you need to know the answers to questions such as these. Nick Wood and Michael Murphy provide an A to Z guide to domain name jargon