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John P Fry and Christopher B Roblyer examine how to defend against charges of wilful infringement and the risk of waiving the attorney-client privilege in US patent and trade mark disputes

In the second of three articles on IP value issues, Tony Samuel and Graeme Berry query why organizations do not insure their most valuable asset, intellectual property.

In preparation for joining the WTO, China has amended its patent law. Jiwen Chen says the changes will enhance protection and simplify application procedures and enforcement

As the UDRP approaches its first birthday, Jane Mutimear asks: should we wish it many happy returns?

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.

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.

Two of the paint industry´ s leading manufacturers were recently engaged in a court battle over the use of the phrase "3 in 1". Nippon Paint (Nippon) had alleged that its rival, ICI Paints (ICI), had been passing off products that were confusingly similar to its "Nippon 3 in 1" interior wall paint.

In Mexico, the Domain Name Registrar is an entity called NIC-Mexico (Network Information Centre de Mexico), which handles registration and administration of domain names identified with the ccTLD (country code Top Level Domain) ".mx". NIC-Mexico is not an authority and it has not been granted official authorization for being in charge of the Mexican domain names management. However, NIC-Mexico is today the only "entity" which has responsibility for managing Mexican domains.

By means of a disclaimer, non-patentable embodiments can be excluded from the scope of a generic claim. Disclaimers are most often used in order to establish novelty. Both the German Patent Office and the European Patent Office accept disclaimers and do not require the disclaimer to have a basis in the patent application as filed.

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