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Thanks to tough economic circumstances, it has been a difficult year for Latin American practitioners. But, says James Nurton, a number of developments promise increasing interest in IP in the future

"We are also seeing companies getting back to basics and building their core brands that consumers already know"

The countries on the eastern and southern fringes of Europe are facing a myriad of challenges in their quest to join the ranks of those coveted clubs – the EU and the EPC, as Ingrid Hering discovers

Artistic copyright has sometimes been seen as the Cinderella of copyright law. Simon Stokes argues that recent artistic copyright cases in Europe and North America are pushing copyright law to its limits. This has implications for the creative industries generally.

New copyright legislation emphasizes China’s commitment to its international obligations. While overseas copyright owners should welcome the new law, enforcement of their rights will remain a challenge, argue Luke Minford and Stella Li

"We are also seeing companies getting back to basics and building their core brands that consumers already know"

The directive concerning legal protection of biotechnological inventions (98/44/EC) has not been annulled according to a judgment made by the European Court of Justice (ECJ) on October 9 2001 (C 377/98).

In Aptix Corp v Quickturn Design Systems, Inc (60 USPQ 2d 1705 (Fed Cir November 5 2001)), two members of a three-judge Federal Circuit panel held that a US patent remains "presumptively valid" and enforceable, despite the admitted blatantly fraudulent conduct of its inventor in seeking its enforcement before a federal district court. The decision is troublesome, because it overrules the contrary Federal Circuit ruling in Fraige v American National Watermattress Co (27 USPQ 2d 1149, 1151, n3 (Fed Cir 1993)) and repudiates a principle considered virtually axiomatic among US lawyers for many years ? that is, that fraud practised in connection with either acquiring or enforcing a patent renders the thus-tainted patent permanently unenforceable. Furthermore, it is difficult to see any legitimate public or private purpose that is served by pronouncing the patent presumptively valid and hence enforceable either by someone other than the original patentee or by the patentee at a later time and in the absence of the offending research notebooks.

Ingrid Hering, London

Slovakia is expected to join the EPC on July 1 2002. For this reason 2001 saw a lot of work in the field of IP rights, including the adoption and amendment of a Patents Act and a new Trade Marks Act which came into force on January 1 2002. Details of this will be discussed in a later issue of MIP. Industrial designs, which up until now have been governed by Act No 527/90, will be the subject of a new independent Act. The respective Bill is already under discussion and is expected to be passed in the first half of 2002. It is worth stressing that all amendments to Slovak legislation in the field of IP rights are in compliance with the EPC and that Slovakia has taken all the necessary steps to be well prepared for access to the EPC.