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Bruce A Lehman President, International Intellectual Property Institute Washington DC

The Andean Community (Venezuela, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru and Bolivia) has now issued the new Decision 486 (the Decision), with 280 articles, that replaces Decision 344, covering a Common Andean Industrial Property Code. The Decision does not amend the prior legislation, but puts out an encyclopedic and repetitive text of which the salient chapters are one on integrated circuits and another on unfair competition. We shall here focus en the latter.

An October 25 2000 decision of the United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit re-emphasizes the importance of the so-called "written description" requirement of United States patent law. In Purdue Pharma LP v Faulding Inc, 56 USPQ 2d 1481 (Fed Cir 2000), the Court affirmed a district court ruling invalidating several claims because nothing in the underlying patent application clearly and necessarily described the subject matter later embodied in its issued claims, saying:

In Euromarket Designs Inc v Peters & anr (unreported: 27/07/2000), the claimant ran the US "Crate & Barrel" stores selling household goods and furniture, and also owned UK and Community-wide trade marks. The first defendant owned a company (the second defendant) which had a shop in Ireland called "Crate & Barrel". The defendants had a website to sell their products and advertised in Homes & Gardens magazine which has a UK and Republic of Ireland based circulation. The claimant sought summary judgment in the UK alleging infringement of its UK trade mark. The defendants intended to sell only to and in the Irish market and therefore argued that it was not using the trade mark "in the course of trade" in the UK.

The system of protection of geographical indications which is being introduced in Poland (the respective provisions of the Industrial Property Law will come into force in the first half of 2001) provides for full respect of rights deriving from earlier trade mark registrations.

o China:

In a court room in San Francisco, Judge Stuart Pollack ruled that online auctioneer eBay cannot be sued for auctioning sound recordings over its web site even if they infringe copyright.

Michael Lantos, of Danubia Patent & Trademark Attorneys in Budapest, reviews the status of trade mark protection in Hungary and makes some predictions for the future

Defensive marks are a valuable weapon in Japan. Hidetake Sekine, of Tokyo Aoyama Law Office/Baker & McKenzie in Tokyo, examines the merits of using them

Following a busy year in Singapore’s courts, Ella Cheong & G Mirandah in Singapore analyze three important trade mark cases