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In 2012 the European Commission set up an Expert Group to advise the Commission with respect to the relation between IP and Directive 98/44/EC on the legal protection of biotechnological inventions. This directive is also known as the Biotech Directive.

While SPCs can be granted for medicinal products in accordance with Regulation (EC) No 469/2009, it has been questioned whether medical devices that are also subject to a lengthy product approval process similar to medicinal products could be eligible for SPC protection in the absence of an explicit Regulation in this respect. In the past, the German Federal Patent Court (Bundespatentgericht or BPatG) adopted a relatively liberal approach in deciding that SPCs for an implantable medical device comprising a pharmaceutically active substance are allowable (14 W (pat) 12/07). A recent case may signal that the German Federal Patent Court may apply a stricter approach in the future.

The Directive (EU) 2015/2436 of the European Parliament and of the Council of December 16 2015 to approximate the laws of the Member States relating to trade marks was published in the Official Journal on December 23 2015 and entered into force on the 20th day following its publication date. Most of its provisions shall thus be implemented in national laws within a three-year deadline, that is by January 14 2019.

In The Netherlands there are two theories concerning the scope of protection of designs with technical features, more specifically the scope of protection of their technical elements. The first one is the so-called apparaat gerichteleer (apparatus-focused doctrine). According to this theory, every design element of a product which is technical or functional should be excluded from design protection. The other one is the so-called resultaat gerichteleer (result-focused doctrine). This theory holds that design protection of technical or functional elements of a product is possible as long as there are alternative technical or functional elements at hand to achieve the same result.

The results of the EPO's recently published Patent Filings Survey illustrate that the European patent is more popular than ever, with this upwards trend predicted to continue. A detailed study of the survey reveals that the strong growth in filings at the European Patent Office is driven by increased patent filing activity in both the UK and China, alongside a continued rise in other major territories.

The New Argentine Civil and Commercial Code, in effect as of August 1 2015, includes, when addressing different issues, regulations referred to intellectual property.

The Supreme Court of China released a new set of judicial interpretations governing the patent infringement lawsuits in March, which has entered into force on April 1 2016. The new judicial interpretation is intended to further enhance and clarify the way patent infringement lawsuits are done in China. Before going into the details, it may helpful to note that the Supreme Court is taking active steps to ensure the courts are playing dominant roles in handling patent disputes, as the State Intellectual Property Office is openly calling for more powers to enforce patents through administrative routes. The dual-track enforcement system in China, which was never given too much attention the past, is somehow a topic in today's China patent world. Some aspects of the new rules clearly give the courts a bigger say in driving the patent litigation proceedings.

Companies large and small are filing more and more trade mark applications in China to support product launches. But even companies without immediate plans to sell in China are filing more due to the risks posed by registry pirates including the possibility they will use pirated registrations to interfere with production and export from China by against their Chinese suppliers.

Several judgments have been rendered on the scope of granting registration of patent term extension (PTE). Now a judgment regarding the scope of the extended patent right has been rendered for the first time.

Many foreign trade mark owners rely heavily on their local distributors to get their products distributed in the Indonesian market and sometimes place too much trust in them considering the local distributors' local knowledge of the market. Consequently, some unfortunate cases can occur where the distributors take advantages of the rightful trade mark owner's lack of protection and seek the registration of the trade mark in their own names, without obtaining the trade mark owner's consent. This is done in the hope that once the distributorship ends, the existing registrations may serve as their leverage in seeking opportunities to continue selling.