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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.

On June Law 19/2006 to increase protection for IP rights was published in the Spanish Official Gazette. The Law establishes the rules of proceedings to facilitate the enforcement of different Community regulations. This Law transposes Directive 2004/48/CE regarding IP rights to guarantee a high level of protection, equivalent and homogeneous, in the internal market.

For Singapore patent applications, it has been common practice to make voluntary amendments, in particular to the claims, at any time before payment of the grant fee. The patent applications could proceed to grant even though the amendments were not searched and examined.

Fierce battles between branded and generic pharmaceutical companies have been played out in the English courts. Brian Whitehead, Stuart Jackson and Richard Kempner provide effective strategies for both obtaining and avoiding interim injunctions

When two companies could not agree a price for a trade mark sale, they decided to hold an arbitration followed by a mediation. Those involved explain how this unusual process worked

Software piracy: Vietnam and Zimbabwe had the highest software piracy rates in the world last year, at 90%, according to the annual Business Software Alliance/IDC piracy study. But piracy rates in Russia and China fell. Globally, piracy cost the software industry $34 billion, according to the Alliance (see charts).

Well established as an offshore financial centre, the island of Guernsey is now looking to attract IP owners with a series of new laws. James Nurton reports

On May 25 2006, the South African Minister of Trade and Industry published a notice in the Government Gazette, designating the 2010 FIFA World Cup as a protected event in terms of Section 15A of the South African Merchandise Marks Act. This protection will remain in force from the date of publication of the notice until six calendar months have elapsed after the commencement of the World Cup event.