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The Madrid Protocol is a threat or opportunity depending on where you are standing. Ralph Cunningham reports from Hong Kong about how firms in Asia are dealing with their countries’ membership of the international trade mark agreement

Mary Helen Sears In two relatively recent decisions, the United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit has clarified and reaffirmed the well-established US legal doctrine of "first sale" and its corollaries regarding permissible repair and impermissible (and therefore infringing) reconstruction of patented articles and patented processes associated with them. Jazz Photo Corp v International Trade Commission, 59 USPQ 2d 1907 (Fed Cir August 21 2001) and Surfco Hawaii v Fin Control Systems Pty Ltd, 60 USPQ 2d 1056 (Fed Cir September 5 2001) both rest upon a fundamental of US personal property (or "chattel") law, whereby the purchaser within the United States of an article covered by a United States patent, or one that embodies a process covered by such a patent, has the same individual private property right to use and dispose of it as he or she enjoys with respect to a purchased article not covered by a viable US patent. These rights have been recognized by American courts since at least as early as the Supreme Court decision in Wilson v Simpson, 50 US (9 How) 109 (1850) and have been reiterated many times during the ensuing century and a half.

Persistent actions on the part of the Singapore police through the Intellectual Property Rights Branch have been extremely successful in smashing syndicates who have been dealing in pirated articles such as VCDs, DVDs, CD-ROMs, etc.

As the internet has expanded in recent years, it has become more and more important due to the fact that it has revolutionized the communications and now it is a significant marketing tool for large and small businesses.

Johannes Ahme A new cost law is under preparation which, besides introducing the conversion to the euro, integrates the regulations regarding all costs and fees of the German Patent and Trade Mark Office and the Federal Patent Court into a single cost act. Thus, essentially all the rules regarding payment of fees are removed from the patent act, trade mark act, utility model act, design model act etc and integrated into a single common cost act. The basic rule of this new cost act is that fees for an application, a request, an opposition, or an appeal become due at the moment they are filed. The Patent Office or Federal Patent Court will start to work on the particular application, request etc only once the fees have been paid. If the fees are not paid within three months after becoming due, the application, request etc is deemed to be withdrawn. The particular fees and their amounts are listed in an attachment to the cost act.

Heinz Bardehle, senior partner of German firm Bardehle Pagenberg Dost Altenburg Geissler Isenbruck was awarded the Bundersverdienstkreuz (Great Cross of Merit of the German Federal Republic) by Minister of Justice, Herta Dåubler-Gmelin, on October 24.

Although Taiwan is not yet a WTO member, the government is determined to ensure that its patent legislation complies with TRIPs. Daisy Wang outlines the plans to achieve this aim

While the Czech Republic, Hungary and Russia have all strengthened their IP laws, copyright and trade marks owners have major concerns about the lack of enforcement, reports James Nurton

More than half a million .info registrations were made within the first 90 days of the new top level domain name's operation. By comparison, it took the global .com domain more than five years to reach the same level, according to a University of California Berkeley study quoted by the .info registry Afilias.

There is tension across Europe on the question of constructing patent claims. Gerard P Cronin, of Arnander Irvine & Zietman, examines how the English courts have dealt with the question