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James Nurton, London

It is a cruel blow to succeed in both lower courts but to fail at the final hurdle. That is the fate that befell parties in two recent New Zealand cases, interestingly at the hands of two different courts, as New Zealand completes the transition from the old to the new.

On April 26 the European Commission responsible for Justice, Safety and Liberty presented a proposal for a directive aimed at strengthening the fight against counterfeits.

The hedge fund industry has become big business in recent years and funds have tried to distinguish themselves for investors by choosing unique names to serve as source identifiers for the particular financial services they offer. As the hedge fund industry expands, financial service providers doing business in the United States offering investment opportunities often come into conflict with similar companies domiciled overseas using confusingly similar names. However, the unique regulations that apply to the hedge fund industry may, under certain circumstances, alter the traditional trade mark analysis applied when a trade mark dispute arises.

On May 29 2006, the State Council of China issued the Regulations on Protection of Rights of Communication Via the Information Network that will come into effect on July 1 2006. The Regulations are made in light of the WIPO Copyright Treaty 1996 and WIPO Performances and Phonograms Treaty 1996 in relation to the provisions relating to the communication or distribution of the relevant copyright works using wire or wireless means.

On April 28 2006 the EU Council adopted a Regulation on the compulsory licensing of patents and supplementary protection certificates (SPCs). The Regulation establishes a procedure for the grant of licences covering all acts necessary for the purpose of manufacturing pharmaceutical products and exporting them to (broadly) developing and least developed countries affected by public health problems.

On April 25, a new Act – 221/2006 Coll on Enforcement of Industrial Property Rights – entered into force. It is based on Directive 2004/48/EC of the European Parliament.

Intellectual property owners have thus far been sceptical about effective enforcement of IP rights in India. Long delays in litigation and poor enforceability of court orders made IP enforcement close to impossible in India for several years. Things are looking brighter now.

Until recently, the federal legislation of the United Arab Emirates (UAE) did not deal with the challenges that arose from the advent of the digital age. The only law that dealt with some of those issues was the Electronic Transactions and Commerce Law Number 2 of 2002 of the Emirate of Dubai, a law that applied only to the Emirate of Dubai. This year, two new laws, Federal Law Number 1 of 2006 regarding Electronic Transactions and Commerce, and Federal Law Number 2 of 2006 regarding Cyber Crime, were issued to deal respectively with e-commerce and cyber crime issues. These laws were issued to regulate and meet the challenges of contracts concluded online.

Turkey issued its patent law first in 1879, making it one of the earliest countries to do so, but unfortunately no further steps were taken until 1994, when the Turkish Patent Institute was founded. The Turkish Patent Decree Law, comparable to modern provisions, was published in 1995 and was followed by related regulations and several amendments.