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With the creation of an Intellectual Property Prosecution Office, as well as the substitution of the inquisitive criminal system, (in substitution of the accusatory system), Venezuela's judicial branch has expanded its range in protecting patentees from patent infringement.

Related Information

In the first decision of its kind, Singapore's High Court has upheld a biotechnology patent on the HIV-2 virus. It is a decision that will be greeted with interest worldwide, says Tony Yeo

Russia and the other former countries of the Soviet Union are a nightmare for rights owners. Now a group of companies have got together to tackle the problems from the bottom up. James Nurton reports

The English High Court's decision in Davidoff caused a major parallel imports stir. David Rose reveals, though, that the Scottish courts have come to a different conclusion in the same dispute

The United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit on April 14 2000 handed down a decision that required the Director (prior to March 29 2000, the Commissioner) of the United States Patent and Trademark Office to retract his own earlier refusal to permit a patent applicant to correct, pursuant to PCT Rule 91.1 and 37 CFR 1.183 (a US Patent and Trademark Office rule) an incorrect patent application number contained in a Demand for International Preliminary Examination. This decision, Helfgott & Karas, PC v Dickinson, 54 USP Q2d 1425 (Fed Cir 2000) concludes that the Director "acted arbitrarily and capriciously in dismissing the plaintiff's petition to correct the erroneous Demand for International Preliminary Examination", inter alia, because PCT Rule 91.1 is legally binding on the Director and allows the correction of "obvious errors" in certain PCT filings, including such Demands.

Deals

The Spanish Government has drafted a new Trade Mark Law which will be presented to the Spanish Parliament for debate later this year. The new law will tighten the existing 1988 law by enforcing the Spanish Constitutional Court ruling which argued that competence in some matters of trade marks should correspond to the Spanish Autonomous Communities; some provisions of the Protocol and TRIPs Agreement; harmonization with the Community Trade Mark Regulation and the complete implementation of the Trade Mark Law Treaty including the introduction of the multi-class system.

The European Commission has taken a big step towards the implementation of the European Community Patent. On July 5, following discussions at the Lisbon and Fiera summits, internal market commissioner Frits Bolkestein announced that the single EU patent should be available by the end of next year.

The Andean Court of Justice has just passed an important decision concerning the implementation of Decision 344. Jose Barreda explains that the decision will lead to greater conformity between the member states