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Sam Mamudi, Washington DC and Ingrid Hering, London

The European Commission proposes to make radical changes to technology licensing within Europe. The proposed new Technology Transfer Block Exemption Regulation (TTBER) is presented as a business-friendly liberalization of the European technology transfer regime. However, many commentators feel that these proposals will stifle technology transfer, considerably reduce the value of intellectual property rights, and may cause Europe to fall further behind the United States in the development of new technology industries.

The bankruptcy reform Organic Act 8/2003, published on July 9 this year, amended the Organic Act of the Judiciary and set up the commercial courts and the Community Trade Mark Court.

As from January 1 2004 essential changes will be introduced in the Polish structure of jurisdiction and two Acts will come into force - the Act on the Structure of Common Courts of Law and the Act on Administrative Procedure. Administrative jurisdiction will be a two-tiered one. Up to now the only court in control of administrative issues has been the Supreme Administrative Court. As from next year there will also be regional administrative courts. The necessity to introduce two-tiered administrative jurisdiction derives from the provisions of the new Constitution of the Republic of Poland adopted in 1997. These legal changes will exert substantial influence on issues related to industrial property protection in Poland, including trade marks. Along with these Acts entering into force, the Law on Industrial Property that applies, among others, to trade mark protection will also change.

The following is an extract from the Romanian Government IP Strategy.

The Malaysian government in its efforts to encourage Malaysian industries to conduct more R&D and to promote Malaysian products and services overseas has introduced several incentives in the 2004 budget. Some of the salient features in this respect are:

In a judgment handed down in the case of Class International v SmithKline Beecham on 28 August 2003, the Court of Appeal at The Hague posed six preliminary questions for the ECJ. Our firm handles this case on behalf of GlaxoSmithKline.

The revamped trade mark law in Hong Kong promises a smoother opposition system that is more efficient and offers better protection, explain Ella Cheong and Chloe Lee

Although the Copyright Directive has come into force, it is only the first step in achieving harmonized copyright protection in the digital age, explains Anna Duffus

At its recent meeting, ICANN announced that it will push ahead with plans to increase the number of top-level domains. But trade mark owners are alarmed by the extra costs and opportunities for piracy that expansion will bring. Ingrid Hering reports