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Svetlana B Felitsyna, Natalia A Serpkova, Sergey Y Yakovlev and Leonid E Goukasyan of Sojuzpatent in Moscow provide an overview of intellectual property protection available in the Russian Federation, and examine the proposed changes to the trade mark regime

In most countries, the most expensive part of prosecuting a patent application is the cost of search and examination. Singapore took a positive approach by allowing an applicant to rely on search and examination results for a corresponding application in lieu of search and examination of the Singapore application. No official fees are imposed on an applicant who chooses to do so. For this purpose, corresponding applications from Australia, Canada, the EPO, UK, US and PCT (not designating Singapore) may be used. A corresponding application must relate to substantially the same invention and be connected to the Singapore application by a priority claim, for example, a common priority claim.

In a row over the ownership of a programme format, Delhi High Court has granted protection to information revealed in a series of meetings about the programme idea. The decision is a triumph for the protection of confidential information, argues Binny Kalra

Customs is a very important institution in any country. So it is in Russia. Until the advent in Russia of the concept of intellectual property, Customs served to thwart undesirable imports and keep them outside the Russian borders. Also exports were controlled to implement the economic policy of the government. All this remains a top priority for Customs today.

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 US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit's infamous Festo decision has led to countless debates as to how careful one should now be when amending the claims of US patent applications during prosecution before the USPTO. The US Supreme Court, in its judgment rendered in May 2002, has partially softened the harsh impact of the CAFC's original decision, which applied a file wrapper estoppel completely barring the use of the doctrine of equivalents in subsequent infringement proceedings as far as the amended portion of the claim was concerned.

Michael Geist, law professor, University of Ottawa, and director of e-commerce law, Goodmans LLP, Toronto

Law no. 202 on the assurance of the abidance by the intellectual property rights during Customs operations was adopted at the end of 2000 and this was followed by the Methodological Norms for the enforcement of Law no 202/2000 on March 8 2001.

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).