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Wu Yuhe and Dong Jiangxong, of China Patent Agent (HK) Ltd, explain what you should know about patent and trade mark assignment, licensing and technology transfer in China

The obsolete Spanish regulation on industrial models and designs of 1929 has finally been reviewed and substituted by a new modern Design Law, adapted to EU Directive 98/71/EC.

To streamline the administration of the examination and grant of patents, industrial designs, trade marks and geographical indicators, the IP Department was converted into an independent corporation with autonomous powers on March 3 2003. It is known as the Malaysian Intellectual Property Corporation, or PHIM (the Malay language acronym of the corporation). Additional staff have been recruited, hours to receive applications have been increased and new administrative procedures have been introduced. Time taken to examine and grant a registrable IP right is being substantially reduced. More good news is that the filing fees remain unchanged. These changes augur well for owners and users of IP rights.

One of the most elusive questions in copyright litigation faced by courts the world over has been how to map out the horizons of the idea/expression dichotomy. In 1978, the Supreme Court of India in the RG Anand case held that one of the surest and safest tests to determine whether or not there has been a copyright infringement is to see if the reader after having read both the works gets an unmistakable impression that the subsequent work appears to be a copy of the original.

On May 6 2003 the European Court of Justice handed down a revolutionary judgment on the possibility of taking out trade mark registrations for colours per se.

Ralph Cunningham, Hong Kong

There were 23 Americans on our MIP 50 list of the most influential people in IP, published in last month's issue. But, judging from readers' responses, that was not enough.

Since July 1 2003, the European Patent Office has started a new pilot project which may be of interest to a large number of applicants.

Criminal procedures can be an effective means of taking action against counterfeiters. Steven Bazerman and Jason Drangel examine the opportunities for rights owners at federal and state level in the US

On July 24 2003 the National Copyright Administration of China (NCAC) issued the new Implementing Measures for Administrative Penalties on Copyright Infringement, effective September 1 2003, to replace the earlier measures issued in 1997. The Measures aim to make the provisions consistent with those of the new Copyright Law and Copyright Implementing Regulations which underwent substantial amendments in 2001 and 2002 respectively. Moreover, they supplement the Law and the Implementing Regulations so as to make them more operable when it comes to administrative enforcement of copyright. The major changes are as follows.