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In the wake of the Law on Advertising, which came into force on July 1 2006, the State Duma adopted some changes to the Criminal Procedure Code. The Criminal Code already contains provisions for the punishment of IP infringers and in past years those sanctions have been made harder. Now the new procedure makes it easier for law enforcement bodies to deal with infringement cases in the field of copyright. At present, only public prosecutors are empowered to initiate criminal cases against infringers according to Section 146 of the Criminal Code. The new provision of the Criminal Procedure Code empowers the police to prosecute wrongdoers in copyright matters. A criminal case according to Section 146 may be initiated if the damage to the copyright owner is more than R50,000 ($2,000). A crime of this calibre shall be punished by imprisonment of up to five years.

During a recent meeting on intellectual property piracy in Geneva, the Motion Picture Association of America and Interpol applauded the government of Malaysia for its stringent measures and its commitment in fighting against pirated intellectual property within the country.

David Highet is chief IP counsel for Becton Dickinson and a trustee of the American Intellectual Property Law Education Foundation. He spoke to MIP about patent trolls, changing approaches to patents and the need for diversity in the IP profession

Section 40(3) of the Australian Patents Act 1990 sets out that the claims of a patent specification must be "fairly based on the matter described in the specification". Essentially, this means that the support for the full breadth of the claims must be found in the description. This is one of the most contentious areas of Australian patent law.

In the case of Shangri-La International Hotel Management et al (SLIHM), v Developers Group of Companies, Inc (DGCI) issued on March 31 2006, involving the trade marks Shangri-La and the S logo, the Supreme Court reversed the decisions of the Court of Appeals and the Regional Trial Court which found SLIHM guilty of trade mark infringement, and ruled in favour of SLIHM.

Transferring technology across borders is always complex, and particularly so when the countries involved are the US and China. Zhu (Julie) Lee and J Bruce Schelkopf provide some practical legal strategies

Yoshitaka Sonoda of Sonoda & Kobayashi, Tokyo provides an overview of patent initiatives in Japan, ranging from simplified prosecution for international applicants to the latest decisions from the courts

Trade mark attorneys in the US are warning that applicants risk losing their rights if they claim too broad a range of goods or services.

An understanding of copyright developments has become vital for all involved in digital and networking technology. Yuko Noguchi of Mori Hamada & Matsumoto analyzes recent legal changes and court decisions in this area, and compares Japanese and US practice

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.