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Even a casual student of United States patent law developments during the past year unavoidably would have happened on multiple discussions of the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit´ s State Street Bank & Trust Co v Signature Financial Group (149 F3d 1368 (Fed Cir 1998)) decision, that held computer software for conducting methods for doing business to be patentable subject matter and not per se unpatentable subject matter. Not only has a majority of the US legal community positively responded to this decision because it addresses critical patentability questions involving software, but also technology owners have responded with increased patent application filings. By last December, the US Patent and Trademark Office reported that applications claiming inventions in a fashion similar to the claims in State Street Bank had increased by over 40% over the previous year and that it expected to issue over 300 patents with business method type software claims by October of this year. Unmistakably, the pump was primed even before the State Street Bank decision issued.

When the Russian Patent Law entered into force in 1992, few people thought it would take six long years to form the High Patent Chamber. The need for such a tool was enormous. Disgruntled applicants had no other recourse if they were turned down at the Chamber of Appeals. The Chamber of Appeals solved the bulk of the problems when examiners refused, for whatever reason, to grant a patent. However, roughly one case out of four would leave the applicant dissatisfied and be a headache for the Patent Office and for the applicant. Such cases simply piled up and waited for better times.

Sebago puts pressure back on politicians

Article 6 of Law 255/1998 for Protecting New Varieties of Plants stipulates the conditions the variety must meet in order to be considered novel. These conditions are fully harmonized with the corresponding provisions of UPOV (the International Convention for the Protection of New Varieties of Plants), Article 6 (1) (b).

Under Australian law "a complete specification must describe the invention fully, including the best method known to the applicant of performing the invention" . Case law states that "....the objection of insufficiency is concerned only with enabling addressees amongst the public, on the expiration of the patentee´ s monopoly, to successfully use the specification for their own purposes.

The German Federal Supreme Court recently issued a decision on colour marks (Farbmarke gelb/schwarz, December 10 1998), which has ended a controversy in Germany. According to this decision, non-contoured definite colours or compositions of colours are registrable as trade marks.

The Japan Supreme Court handed down the first decision concerning standards to be used in recognizing the gist of a claimed invention in the landmark March 1991 case involving the Japanese Patent Office (JPO) and the German company Boehringer-Mannheim.

Moves, Deals, Developments

United States district courts have reached different conclusions as to the effect of foreign patent proceedings on US patent litigation.

In January this year Estonia adopted several amendments to the laws regulating the protection of intellectual property and in particular the sanctions for the infringement of intellectual property rights. The amendments had been due to the need both to solve the problems arising during the implementation of these laws thus far and harmonizing the laws with EC Directives in this field. All the amendments are designed to make the fight against pirated and counterfeit goods more effective and in this way to prevent any further distribution of counterfeit goods in Estonia.