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Intellectual property in Asia Pacific has moved into a new phase. In the years before 2001, the countries in the region were committed to ensuring their IP laws complied with the TRIPs Agreement. Now that this work has largely been completed, the next task is to enforce those laws to give IP owners confidence that their rights will be adequately protected.

Lucian Enescu and Crina N Frisch, of Rominvent in Bucharest, illustrate how IP owners in Romania can use Customs to enforce their rights

The "rule of the essence" marked the beginning of the doctrine of equivalents in Dutch legislation. Marc AA van Wijngaarden, of Arnold + Siedsma in The Hague, traces its development

? Europe: WIPO is preparing to select a director general when Kamil Idris retires on November 30 2003. A special session of the general assembly will be held in May or June next year to endorse a nomination by the WIPO coordination committee. The EPO is also seeking a new president to start in January 2004, when Ingo Kober steps down.

The city of Venice will adopt a trade mark to promote tourism and help fund public works such as fortifying the lagoon.

There is an indication that North Korea (Democratic People's Republic of Korea) is changing. Recently, North Korea announced the abolition of the "distribution system", its symbol of communism. The abolition symbolizes the recognition of the "privatization of property, " as North Korea became the "last experimental station on earth" relating to the introduction of a market economy.

The growing importance of IP rights in Japan has led to frequent amendments to the corpus of Japanese IP laws. Such tweaking has however made it more difficult than ever to gain a grasp on which amendments are applicable to which patents. The following is a quick summary of the major amendments to the Japanese Patent Law made over the last 20 years.

In German court decisions as well as in the German patent literature it has been a generally accepted position that product claims on the one hand and process claims on the other hand represent distinct claim categories; and that product patents (containing only product claims) and process patents (containing only process claims) are distinct patent categories. The applicant is free to choose the appropriate claim category or categories; a patent may contain product claims, process claims or both. However, after grant this choice is binding on the patentee, and a change of category from a product patent to a process patent (and vice versa) is considered to be inadmissible because it involves an extension of the protection conferred (Benkard, Patentgesetz – Gebrauchsmustergesetz, 9th Edition 1993, pages 141, 501, 686 and 710).

On May 22 this year, the US Supreme Court decided the most eagerly-awaited patent case in many years, Festo v SMC. The case addresses a key issue for patent holders: what protection is available under the doctrine of equivalents. But was the decision as important as many people have claimed? What effect will it have for patent applicants and litigants in the US? And what impact will it have on the US Patent and Trademark Office, the Federal Circuit and district courts? MIP invited six senior IP practitioners in the US to a round table discussion, held at the Washington DC offices of Finnegan Henderson, to discuss the implications of the Festo decision, as well as other recent patent cases. James Nurton moderated the discussion

Australia: Almost 40% of Australian businesses are using pirated software, according to a Dimension Data Australia survey reported in The Australian newspaper, with IT managers blaming the problem on complex licensing programmes and a lack of internal monitoring. China: Sina.com, said to be China's leading internet content provider, has been ordered to pay Qian Kun, a writer, Rmb2,000 ($240) for publishing work Qian had done exclusively for Sohu.com, Sina's biggest rival, according to China Daily. Beijing No 1 Intermediate Court also ordered Sina.com to carry apologies to the writer on its sports channel for seven days. China: In what is thought to be an unprecedented move, authorities will allow US prosecutors to come to Beijing to question witnesses about the theft of Lucent Technologies software. The US lawyers are coming to the Chinese capital to interview staff from Datang Telecom Technology. In June 2001, three Chinese citizens, two of whom worked at Lucent's headquarters in New Jersey, were charged with stealing trade secrets from Lucent with the intent of using Datang to market a product based on the secrets. China: The Supreme People's Court has ruled that a trade mark owner can be prosecuted in a product liability action. The Beijing Municipal Higher People's Court asked the higher court to rule on the issue after it came up in a case concerning General Motors, the US car company, and two of its subsidiaries. The ruling came into force on July 28. Japan: The Office for Promotion of Justice System Reform is to study a proposal to exclude the public from court hearings on patents and other IP rights to prevent important business secrets from being revealed, according to Kyodo News Service. Japan: Sony has developed Open MG X, a new digital copyright management and distribution technology, which it says will stop the unauthorized copying of entertainment files, such as music and films, that are distributed over the internet and also enable content distributors to set hours and number of times for replaying such files. Thailand: The Business Software Alliance (BSA) has made its first raid in Thailand on a website it believes was selling pirated software, music, movies and pornography. The Economic Crime Investigations Division of the Thai Police carried out the raid on SmileThailand.com with the help of BSA investigators. The operator of the website was said to be selling CDs for Bt150 ($3.57).