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With the grand aim of creating the world's largest free trade market internally linked by free-trade agreements (FTAs) across nations, the US administration has taken up the role of protecting and upholding the free trade environment, (free of anti-competitive, anti-dumping, anti-trust among other features). The FTA with Singapore (being the first FTA with an Asian country), when negotiations are completed and the fine print agreed upon, will be a precedent upon which future FTAs with other countries will be based on.

? Malaysia: Shopping mall owners have lobbied the government to give them more time to eliminate the sale of pirated goods from their premises. The commerce ministry had given the owners of 12 shopping malls until February 1 to ensure that no fake products were being sold in the malls.

Sam Mamudi, New York

The UK government has been urged to review the TRIPs agreement to alleviate the burden of implementation on developing countries.

James Nurton, Nice

Microsoft has given the music industry a new weapon in its fight against piracy.

Ralph Cunningham, Hong Kong

The European Commission has published controversial proposals to amend the Community Trade Mark Directive.

In recent years, many websites providing goods and services have appeared as a consequence of the development of the internet as a business environment. Consumers all over the world can find a very large range of goods and services easily and quickly. Under these circumstances it was obvious that domain names became a very important element in order to draw the consumer's attention.

Today, the vast majority of national patents pending in the European countries have evolved from patents granted by the European Patent Office. Even if the validity of such a patent has been confirmed in opposition proceedings before the European Patent Office, it can still be attacked in nullity proceedings before the national patent authorities. In national invalidation proceedings, any differences between the European Patent Office and the national authorities with respect to the interpretation of the basic standards for patentability might turn into a trap for the patent owner.