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In Thailand, the leading ground for trade mark rejections is the finding of descriptiveness. Much to the dismay of applicants, descriptiveness rejections at times differ from findings in other trade mark offices. For example, some examiners reject applications when they are descriptive of anything, as opposed to using the more internationally accepted criteria where marks should only be rejected on descriptiveness grounds if they merely describe a characteristic of the goods or services specified in the application.

Apple has had its trade mark Sherlock revoked by the Intellectual Property Office of Singapore in a recent case which reinforces the need for trade mark owners to establish evidence of genuine use of their mark – or risk losing it.

In the past, although the IP Office recognised the fame enjoyed by popular movies, such recognition did not render these titles to be famous marks by default. Nowadays, considering that the production companies of well-received movies or TV shows are apt to release many tie-in products and that a box office hit often promises high public awareness, the IP Office has made it clear in Article 4.7 of the Examination Guidelines on Distinctiveness of Trade Marks that "[t]he titles of works, including books, films, and dramas, shall be deemed to have acquired their distinctiveness if, after extensive exposure, they have implanted a vivid impression in the minds of consumers". On this score, the copyright owners or parties with the copyright owner's consent are entitled to register such titles as trade marks.

As Turkey is a member of EPC, any provision of the EPC has the power of national law and can be directly applicable for European patents validated in Turkey. However as is well known, the EPC does not have many provisions binding the national courts. One of them is Article 138/3 which gives the European patent owner the right to limit the patent in the event of an invalidation action and orders the national court to take the limited version of the patent as the basis of invalidation proceedings.

It is natural to expect that when a company files a patent application it wants to obtain a patent, maintain it and obtain some profit from it. Sometimes the natural course of things is disrupted.

Even James Bond can boast about having ridden on one. Hispano – Suiza was one of the world references of luxury and competition cars at the beginning of the 20th century and was affected by the Spanish Civil War – not being able to relaunch in the market despite its fame.

It is a common assumption that when the respondent in an opposition case is declared in default for failure to file his answer, and the hearing officer decides on the basis of the evidence submitted by the opposer, the respondent loses and his trade mark application is rejected. That was not the case in Smith & Nephew Inc v Livingstone Healthcare Corp docketed as IPC No 14-2014-00176 decided by the Bureau of Legal Affairs (BLA) of the Intellectual Property Office of the Philippines (IPOPHL) on February 1 2017. The contested application was for the mark Adler covering surgical instruments, filed by Livingstone in 2013.

In Germany, products that are directly obtained by a patent-protected process are entitled to patent protection according to Section 9, Sentence 2 (3) PatG, even if a claim directed to the product is lacking in the patent. To obtain extended protection, according to German practice, it is a necessary condition that the product as such would at least be accessible to patent protection.

The patentability of biotechnological inventions in Europe is governed by the EU Directive on the protection of biotechnological inventions (98/44/EG, the Biotech Directive). The Directive is implemented in the national patent laws, but has also been used to amend the European Patent Convention.

It has been approximately a decade since the Mexican Institute of Industrial Property (IMPI) adopted very strict criteria when assessing the likelihood of confusion between trade marks. As a result of this strict approach IMPI's trade mark examiners had some criteria that were troublesome, especially when marks including designs or associated to a concept were compared to each other.