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The new Industrial Property Code entered into force in January 2017 and repealed Decree Law No 551 on Patents and other decree laws pertaining to IP rights. The new Industrial Property Code only brings a few changes to the Decree Law previously in effect. One of the changes brought by the new Code is that, similar to the European Patent Convention to which Turkey is a party, a post-grant opposition system has been introduced. Accordingly third parties may oppose against the grant of the patent within six months of the publication of the grant decision in the Official Bulletin. Under the now repealed Decree Law, third parties were only allowed to comment on the search report on patent application within six months of publication of the search report.

Trade mark registrations sometimes take turns which would not be expected in the normal run of things. The trade mark owner usually registers his trade mark to sell his goods, promote his services, etc. Sometimes the infrastructure is not ready and the trade mark is not used for some time. In order that the trade mark owner should not be too relaxed there is a pike in the lake to keep all trade mark owners awake. The pike in this context is the law which allows three years of carefree existence of a trade mark.

Generally, when faced with competitor's illegal copying of a product's package, unless the design of such package is a registered design patent or a trade mark, the claimant used to rely on Article 22 of Taiwan's Fair Trade Act to seek injunctive relief. However, under the Fair Trade Act, there will be a heavy burden on the claimant to show to the judge that the asserted package is a "famous representation" that is "commonly known to the general public". Thus, if the design of a product package is eligible for copyright protection, it would be another powerful tool to combat copycats and free riders.

The doctrine of equivalents is provided under Section 75.2 of the IP Code of the Philippines (Republic Act 8293). However, in deciding actions for patent cancellation and infringement, the Intellectual Property Office (IPOPHL) as well as the Supreme Court rely for the most part on American case law. The recent patent infringement case of Eddie T Dionisio v Visita International Phils, Inc and Lal K Tulsiani (IPV No 10-2013-00034, July 28 2016) citing a cancellation case also between the parties shows this.

The Intellectual Property Office of Singapore (IPOS) announced last month that the fees for patent search and examination reports and for trade mark applications will be reduced effective April 1 2017.

The tension in the relationship between patent rights and plant breeder's rights (PBR) is widely known. Recently, some EU member states have opposed the decision taken by the Enlarged Board of Appeals of the European Patent Office (EPO) in cases G2/12 and G2/13 .

On December 26 2016, the Standing Committee of the National People's Congress (NPC) issued the first draft of China's first Ecommerce Law, with an invitation for public comment within 30 days.

Both parties in this case produce and commercialise ticket and entry systems for skiing areas, stadiums and similar establishments and have the same customer circles. The plaintiff additionally runs server installations for internet use by its customers, who use its systems to store clients' data. This data is protected by a login requiring a username and password. The data can be read in the form of reports, for example concerning names and addresses of buyers of tickets. The same is possible on a server of a larger customer on which the plaintiff runs that application for the customer. These reports were routinely stored on caches as intermediate storage media.

In Opke Ireland Global Holdings Ltd v European Union Intellectual Property Office (EUIPO) the General Court (case T-88/16) upheld the Board of Appeal´s decision (case R 2387/2014-5) finding likelihood of confusion between pharmaceutical marks in class 5 according to Article 8 (1) (b) European Union Trade Mark Regulation 207/2009 (EUTMR), namely between the attacked EU mark application, word Alpharen, and the older national Lithuanian and Latvian trade marks, word Alpha D 3. In doing so, the Court had the opportunity to also deal with some procedural regulation rules not which are not commonly adjudicated on.

A Dutch court issued decisions in two court actions that illustrate the remedies that are available from the Dutch courts in cases of contributory infringement. The court found that it had jurisdiction to issue a preliminary injunction on offering and supplying a contributorily infringing product inside and outside the Netherlands, also against a non-Dutch party. The patent acts throughout Europe were essentially identical on contributory infringement. However, the court held that patent law excluded an injunction on holding a contributorily infringing product in stock.