Search results for

Email: info@plass.com

The highest authorities in Japan are focusing on IP creation and exploitation to help the economy. Japanese business has long been aware of the value of patents and trade marks. NEC has set up a new division to exploit the wealth of IP it creates. Ralph Cunningham reports

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).