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The Benelux Trade Marks Office has been forced to change its policy on registering colour marks. It is now possible to register a colour as a trade mark and to restrain third parties from using the chosen colour.

Apple Computer has won world-wide injunctions stopping the manufacture and sale of iMac lookalike Windows systems.

ICANN's new system for settling domain name disputes is already making an impact. In just a couple of months, four victories have been scored by trade mark owners seeking the cyberspace rights to their trade name.

If a major corporation appends its famous house mark to a registered mark owned by another party, is there a conflict? In the appeal case of Registrar of Trade Marks v Woolworths Ltd, the Full Federal of Australia, by a margin of two to one, allowed an application for WOOLWORTHS METRO to be accepted, notwithstanding several earlier METRO marks each of which related to similar goods or services. The Court, at trial and appeal, rejected the Registrar's contention that the marks were deceptively similar.

One of the most common questions asked by foreign clients is: "What is an Amparo suit?" Often the answer from most Mexican lawyers to avoid further explanation is: an appeal.

Under Australian law it is possible to make post grant amendments to a patent either before the Commissioner of Patents, or in the Federal Court of Australia. Typically an application for amendment to the Federal Court is lodged when the patentee is about to commence infringement proceedings on the basis of advice that amendments are required to correct defects or to limit the relevance of prior art. In a recent case, Gambro Pty Ltd v Fresenius Medical Care South East Asia Pty Ltd, amendments were sought to limit the field of invention to the area of real interest fluids for dialysis and related procedures in order to strengthen the patentee´ s position in a cross claim for invalidity.

The German Federal Supreme Court recently issued two decisions on the registrability of slogans (Radio von hier, Radio wie wir and Partner with the Best, both dated December 8 1999), which have terminated an ongoing controversy in Germany. According to these decisions, the requirements for distinctiveness of slogans are not any greater than for regular word marks.

Roger Carlile, of KPMG in Dallas, explains the merits of the two methods for quantifying damages in the US

The internet has thrown up new challenges to IP regimes. Dedar Singh Gill and Rama S Tiwari, of Drew & Napier in Singapore, explain the new provisions covering protection in Singapore

Sergio L Olivares, Jr and Alejandro Luna, of Olivares & Cia in Mexico City, examine the usefulness of new procedures enabling civil judges to award damages in IP cases