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The ECJ dealt a deadly blow to cross-border patent litigation in two long-awaited decisions handed down in July. But in his review of the state of multinational patent litigation in Europe in the wake of the rulings, Reinhardt Schuster concludes that forum shopping may not be so bad for litigants

A monthly column devoted to IP curiosities and controversies, named in honour of John of Utynam - who received the world's first recorded patent in 1449

When it comes to litigation, the Eastern District of Texas is met with open arms by plaintiffs and trepidation by defendants. While statistics reveal it favours plaintiffs, there are merits for both sides in bringing their cases to the country's latest rocket docket. By Shahnaz Mahmud

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?

James Nurton, London

James Nurton, 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:

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.

In Vitakraft-Werke Wührmann & Sohn GmbH & Co KG v Office for Harmonization in the Internal Market (OHIM) the European Court of First Instance (CFI) confirmed OHIM´s ruling denying a likelihood of confusion between the pets marks Vitakraft and Vitacoat.

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).