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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.

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.

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.

Emma Barraclough, London and Brussels

Shahnaz Mahmud, London

With Vietnam's impending entry into the WTO, there have been many recent developments in intellectual property law, including:

One year after fining AstraZeneca €60 million, the European Commission has finally published its decision in a limited version proposed by AstraZeneca.

The Irish government recently announced the introduction of a new Privacy Bill which will protect all Irish citizens from the invasion of their right to privacy. The new Bill creates the tort of violation of privacy, which is committed where any person wilfully and without lawful authority violates the privacy of an individual. The tort is actionable without proof of financial loss and applies to newspapers and magazines, broadcasting organizations and (to the extent that it is technologically possible to prove) the internet. In this month's article we take a look at the controversial draft Bill.

According to Turkish IP law, there is no distinction whatsoever between famous, or highly reputed marks, and well-known marks. The law simply refers to well-known marks as one single concept.