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Emma Barraclough, Hong Kong

MIP's latest survey of the largest IP practices in Asia, Europe and the US shows how a growing trend towards consolidation is re-shaping IP practices in many parts of the world

Two recent cases in the still blurred area of market dominance have left pharmaceutical companies holding their breath. Sophie Lawrance and Pat Treacy examine the cases and whether the way in which competition law is enforced is becoming an obstacle to the pharmaceutical industry's success

Canada: The Supreme Court of Canada refused to allow the Canadian Private Copying Collective to appeal a December 2004 Federal Court of Appeal decision that a levy on memory permanently embedded in digital audio recorders, commonly referred to as the piracy tax, was invalid. The tax, which Canada's Copyright Board promoted as a protection against copyright infringement, had been in place for a year.

NIC-Argentina (www.nic.ar) has implemented new rules governing the .ar country code top-level domain (cc-TLD) domain names. NIC has put into force Article 5 of the domain name regulation, which was put on hold at the time the rules were enacted in 2000. Article 5 sets out that domain name registrations shall be valid for one-year terms, counted from registration date, and may be renewed indefinitely. Renewal applications will be received in the last month that the registration is in force, and domain names that are not renewed shall be eliminated from the Registry automatically.

The re-establishment of patent rights in the Netherlands is based on Section 23 of the Netherlands Patents Act 1995. The requirements correspond to Section 122 of the European Patent Convention, except from the two-month term which, in the Netherlands is worded "as soon as possible".

For its impact on patent owners, Phillips v AWH Corporation is one of the most important cases of the past decade. Thankfully, says Irv Feit, the Federal Circuit found a compromise between the competing approaches to claim interpretation

The decision to trust an outside provider with internal business responsibility is not taken lightly, but for a business looking to cut costs and improve efficiency, outsourcing business responsibilities to a trusted provider is not only cost-effective, but it can also be the most viable option for many of its activities. Already commonplace in the globalized IT industry, this corporate trend has begun to make its way into trade mark departments, as managements increasingly recognize the financial and administrative benefits of outsourcing trade mark renewals to a third-party company.

Mexico's patent regime had, until recently, created a situation that allowed untested generics to come to market. But, says Luis Schmidt, a recent change in the law should improve standards

Brands have become some of companies' most valuable assets. With increasingly more companies waking up to that fact, the pressure is on trade mark advisers to find the best protection and enforcement strategies. Darren Olivier and John Olsen of Field Fisher Waterhouse explain