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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.

In Germany a declaratory action is an established instrument to react to an unwarranted warning letter. But whether it is necessary to send a counter-warning in response to a first warning letter so as to prevent an award of costs pursuant to S 93 ZPO (Code of Civil Procedure) when filing a declaratory action has up to now been a moot point. Different courts have handed down different decisions on this point. The District Court of Cologne confirmed the necessity of a counter-warning letter to prevent an award of costs pursuant to S 93 ZPO. Several Higher Regional Courts, however, denied the basic necessity of sending a counter-warning letter.

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).