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Sam Mamudi, London

The realities of market economics in Romania and the free play of supply and demand mean that there is always the danger of dishonest means being used to attract customers. This makes industrial property protection and the protection (or apparent protection) of trade marks a key area. However, there are numerous interferences in trade mark and industrial design, especially in the domain of bi- and three-dimensional figurative marks, mainly those concerning labels, the form of products and their packaging.

Compound marks are those formed by two or more words. When a third party adds a word to a nominative trade mark that is already registered, the result must be a mark that is sufficiently distinctive for it to be registered as a new mark, and there must be no danger of it being confused with the products identified with the mark that had been previously registered.

New industrial property regulations in Poland give the Supreme Administrative Court control over the legality of decisions issued by the Polish Patent Office. The new rules that came into force on August 22 last year overturn more than 60 years of administrative procedure where control was limited to extraordinary appeals against final sentences which could be filed only by administrative boards in clearly defined special situations. These appeals were examined by judges of the Chamber of Administration Labour and Social Insurance at the Supreme Court and until last August the Supreme Administrative Court (which was set up in 1980), did not examine any matters related to industrial property. Under Polish constitutional law the Supreme Administrative Court along with the Supreme Court, the Constitutional Tribunal and the Tribunal of State is the highest court in Poland.

Section 3 (1) of the 1994 German Trade Mark Act provides that "any signs, particularly words ... including colours and combinations of colours, which are capable of distinguishing the goods or services of one undertaking from those of other undertakings may be protected as trade marks." With this wording the 1994 statute exceeds the standards given by article 2 of the European Council Directive.

The International Nice Classification allows all entities which are part of the Nice Convention to unify under one criteria the classification of goods and services to be protected with a trade mark.

The EU Biotechnology Directive (98/44/EC) was controversial in the making and remains so. The member states of the EU had until July 31 2000 to transpose the Biotechnology Directive into their national legal systems. So far only five of them have done so.

Patent applications in biotechnology have grown dramatically in the past decade, throwing up many challenges and posing new problems for patent offices. Ingrid Hering speaks to examiners at the EPO and USPTO to find out how they are dealing with these issues

Ingrid Hering, London

For some time there has been uncertainty about the Czech Republic joining the EPC and the date that this might happen (see previous International Briefings). However, accession to the EPC has recently been approved by the Czech parliament and the proposed date, July 1 2002, confirmed. Consequently, on this date Part 3 of the Czech Patents Act No 527/1990 as amended by Act 116/2000, regulating proceeding of the European Patent Applications will come into effect.