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Under Australian law "a complete specification must describe the invention fully, including the best method known to the applicant of performing the invention" . Case law states that "....the objection of insufficiency is concerned only with enabling addressees amongst the public, on the expiration of the patentee´ s monopoly, to successfully use the specification for their own purposes.

In Estonia the Integrated Circuits Protection Act, already adopted by the Parliament on November 25 1998, came into force on March 16 1999. This Act follows the principles of the Washington 1989 Treaty, TRIPs Agreement and EU Directive 87/54/EEC on the legal protection of topographies of semiconductor products.

In the April 1998 issue of MIP we presented comments about the development of IP rights for the first five years of the existence of the Czech Industrial Property Office. 1998 figures show a continuity in all fields of IP rights. The number of new patent applications is still increasing, utility models and designs are more or less steady and trade mark applications are slowly decreasing. What is quite important from the internal point of view is the fact that for the first time not only since 1993, but since 1990, the number of domestic applicants went up slightly. Figures showing the number of trade mark registrations prove that the backlog from previous years has already been overcome. When comparing the number of filings with the number of registrations, it can be clearly seen that registrations more or less correspond to filings as we must bear in mind that some applications do not mature into registrations due to objections both from the part of the Office and from third parties.

A marketing war between rival vacuum cleaner brands is being dragged through courts across Europe, testing the limits of comparative advertising.

According to EC Directives on Telecommunications, member states are obliged to adapt tariffs towards real costs. In Spain, the compliance with these Directives implies the reduction of tariffs for long distance calls (both national and international), and the increase of tariffs for local calls and of the initial access quote. According to Telefónica, the increase of the initial access quote is necessary in order to finance the so-called initial access deficit (which is the difference between the amount obtained by Telefónica for the installation of a line, and the amount that it really costs) that it has to endure at the present time. Although the Spanish government adopted measures for tariff re-balancing in the month of August (by means of increasing urban calls and the initial access quote), Telefónica considered that this increase was not sufficient in order to cover the real costs and claimed new increases, which the government opposed because of their impact on the inflation rate. This attitude has motivated the complaint filed before the European Commission, who has established the deadline for the Spanish government to file its allegations on February 11.

A new law (No 334/December 31 1998) granting patent protection in Romania for new plant varieties is to enter into force on April 1 1999. From that date, the previous regulations regarding the protection of plant varieties, as stipulated in the Romanian Patent Law 64/1991, will be repealed. Furthermore, the new law enunciates that patent applications filed according to the Patent Law 64/1991, having as subject matter a new plant variety or hybrid, and for which no Notice of Allowance or Rejection will have been issued by April 1 1999, will be solved (finalized) in accordance with the new law 334/1998.

Franchising is one of the most effective means of exploiting intellectual property. As in any exploitation of intellectual property, an infrastructure that enables successful protection and enforcement of intellectual property rights is crucial. Singapore and Malaysia both afford a strong intellectual property regime and are ideal for franchises to thrive. However, the franchising concept involves more than just protection of intellectual property rights. There are other important issues that must be considered, in particular, an environment that nurtures the franchise industry and the relationship between franchisor, franchisee and third parties. Singapore, or more specifically, the Singapore Trade Development Board (TDB), is focusing on nurturing the franchise industry in Singapore. It hopes to achieve at least 200 home-grown franchises and 165 foreign franchises by the year 2005. The blueprint includes the following new initiatives:

The Internet has been created and has developed without specific regulations and its creators maintain that its absolute anarchy is an essential condition for its existence. In the absence of regulations, the Internet is regarded as a conquest territory and it frequently happens that the entrepreneurs find out that their trade marks have been registered as domain names by third parties, competitors and non-competitors.

United States district courts have reached different conclusions as to the effect of foreign patent proceedings on US patent litigation.

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