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Owning a market-leading product or innovation is useless if you fail to keep your competitors from copying you. Daniel S Drapeau and George R Locke of Ogilvy Renault outline the most effective options available to rights owners

A number of pivotal copyright decisions were handed down last year, establishing precedent-setting rules for rights owners in Canada, says Brian W Gray of McCarthy Tétrault

Pascale Chapdelaine, manager of the IP team at one of Canada's largest companies, BCE, explains her role in the company to Sam Mamudi

Emma Barraclough, Hong Kong

Will the introduction of post-grant opposition provide greater opportunities to patent challengers in the US? A letter from John P Sutton

According to a general principle of French law, in any judicial proceedings, the plaintiff has the burden of proving the facts alleged in support of his claims. Therefore, the person purporting to hold an IP right must adduce evidence of the alleged infringement. This evidence must cover five aspects:

A monthly column devoted to IP curiosities and controversies, named in honour of John of Utynam - who received the world's first recorded patent in 1449

Haier, the Qingdao-based appliance maker, certainly has ambition. While many domestic rivals focus their efforts on supplying China's 1.2 billion home-grown market and others manufacture products to be sold overseas under foreign trade marks, Haier has been rapidly building its brand in China and abroad and has set its sights on becoming one of the top three white goods companies in the world. Emma Barraclough spoke to legal affairs director Su Xiaoxi

Companies embarking on a new business venture or undertaking a brand expansion programme under a selected trade mark typically believe that they have taken care of their intellectual property protection needs once they have searched, cleared and made a federal filing for their trade mark. However, these steps do not prevent a third party from securing internet domain names that are identical or confusingly similar. While the steps to protect trade mark rights accord a basis to challenge such third parties, trade mark owners are often surprised at the costs and difficulties that can be associated with enforcing these rights on the internet.

The Malaysian Intellectual Property Office (MyIPO) has not, until now, allowed a third party to inspect and obtain copies of any documents other than the granted patent specification, unless the patent owner gives written consent. This is despite the provisions in sections 33 and 34(1) of the Patents Act, which allow any party to inspect and obtain extracts of granted patent files. The position taken by MyIPO is that any communication between the applicant and MyIPO, other than the granted specification, should remain confidential, even after grant of the patent.