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The Mexican Law of Industrial Property (LIP) provides that use of a registered trade mark inures to the benefit of a registration only if it is effected directly by the registrant or by a recorded licensee.

The Korean Supreme Court handed down a landmark ruling on April 27 2006, establishing a list of factors that must now be considered when calculating the reasonable royalty rate in all patent infringement cases.

Generic manufacturers operating in Ireland will welcome the recent introduction of legislation which enables them to conduct necessary pre-approval experiments without infringing the patent rights of the original manufacturer. The exemption is contained in new Irish regulations in the form of the European Communities (Limitation of Effect of Patent) Regulations, 2006 (the Irish Regulations) which implement certain sections of Directive 2004/27/EC (with respect to medicinal products for human use) and Directive 2004/28/EC (with respect to veterinary medicinal products).

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.

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.

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.

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.