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In January, the US Supreme Court granted a petition for certiorari in Kirtsaeng v John Wiley & Sons, Inc to decide the standard for determining whether attorneys' fees should be granted to a prevailing party in a copyright case. The Supreme Court's decision on the issue will be closely monitored by prospective plaintiffs and defendants alike since the risk of fee-shifting may have a significant impact upon a party's decision-making with respect to both pursuing and defending a litigation.

Especially in recent years, trade mark owners and their representatives have been confronted with the difficulties of having their clients' 3D trade marks registered with their national office or OHIM.

There is a positive development in data privacy protection in Indonesia, due to the issuance of a draft Ministerial Regulation on Data Protection (Draft Regulation) by the Ministry of Communications and Informatics of the Republic Indonesia (MOCI). This Draft Regulation was prepared as one of the implementing regulations of Law No 11 of 2008 on Electronic Information and Transactions (EIT Law) and Government Regulation No 82 of 2012 on the Implementation of Electronic Systems and Transactions (GR 82). In October 2015, the government also issued a draft Data Protection Law (Draft Law).

When conducting a trade mark availability search, we often recommend adding visual elements in order to avoid a possible likelihood of confusion with prior trade marks.

According to a news release of the EPO issued in mid-January, the "comprehensive reforms undertaken at the EPO in recent years have translated into unprecedented increases in the performance of the Office, with significant improvements in productivity, timeliness and quality in 2015". According to the EPO, its 4,200 examiners accomplished a performance increase of 14% compared to 2014. Some 68,400 European patents were granted in 2015, compared to 64,600 in 2014. The proportion of applications being granted amounted to approximately 48%. Over 85% of European first filing applications received a search report within six months from filing.

As we have explained in previous briefings, the new Argentine Civil and Commercial Code contains several sections that refer, both directly and indirectly, to intellectual property matters.

Bad faith filings by registry pirates in China continue to pose enormous challenges to brand owners, large and small, foreign and domestic.

With its huge population of 92 million, 50% of them under the age of 25, Vietnam has become an attractive destination for the world's major franchises. In urban areas, numerous franchises in sectors such as fast food, clothing, exercise, coffee and convenience stores can be found, with Western franchises as well as franchises from Korea and other Asian countries flourishing.

Back in April 2015 we reported that one of the China antimonopoly agencies (SAIC) published the IP Misuse Rules, which became effective then. What followed after that surprised everyone. The other anti-monopoly agency (National Development and Reform Commission, NDRC), which was at the centre of the attention of the global IP/antitrust community for last couple of years due to its investigation into Qualcomm and InterDigital in China, announced in the summer that it was asked by the State Council to draft guidelines on IP misuse. NDRC issued a preliminary draft in October 2015 and issued an updated version in January.

Following the Myriad decision in the United States, the High Court of Australia recently denied the patent eligibility of isolated genes of BRCA1 DNA. Along with the Alice decision from the United States, this is truly a new wave. What we patent reflects the most fundamental social decisions in our patent system. It is worth seeing how Korea is riding on this wave and balancing its system.