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In a recent decision, the Trademarks Administrative Commission ruled on a case regarding the infringement of a famous trade mark. In particular the applicant filed an application for the trademark Coco & Silk and device, covering goods in classes 14, 18 and 25. The opposing party, Chanel SARL, filed an opposition against the acceptance of this trade mark claiming infringement of its famous trade mark Coco covering goods in classes 14, 18 and 25. The applicant, in defence, claimed that the distinctiveness of its trade mark lies on the combination of the two words, Coco and Silk, as well as on the device contained in the opposed trade mark. To support its argument, it provided evidence that the word Coco forms part of several composite national trade marks belonging to third parties, covering similar goods in classes 14, 18 and 25, all of which co-exist. As claimed by the applicant, the existence of these trademarks proves that the word Coco is of weak distinctiveness.

Restoration of the omission to pay an annuity fee for the Dutch part of a European patent is only allowable under Article 23 of the Dutch Patent Act if the patent proprietor (and his representative) exercised all due care. This was recently decided in a case between Flawa and the Dutch Patent Office (DPO) before the court in The Hague.

As Myanmar has opened up in the past five years, multinationals have rushed into the country. But, reports Shaun Tan, its IP laws are still frozen in time

What does “protected” by a patent mean? Brian Cordery and Steven Willis look at how the CJEU has approached Article 3(a) of the SPC Regulation

On March 2 2017, the State Intellectual Property Office (SIPO) of China announced its decision to amend the Patent Examination Guidelines, effective as of April 1 2017. The new Guidelines provide significant changes to software patents, data supplementation for pharmaceutical patents and claim amendments in the invalidation procedures.

This month we look at benefits and drawbacks of using the Madrid system to extend international trade mark registrations (IRs) to, as compared with filing national applications in, China. This article is not exhaustive and only covers some of the more important issues raised by this topic.

In a guest post, Juan José Caselles Fornés of Elzaburu discusses recent initiatives to tackle counterfeiting and piracy in Spain

A UK IPO statement has confirmed that preparations "remain fully on track" and given more detail on when the last few legislative steps should be expected. This comes a day after Prime Minister Theresa May triggered Article 50 to commence Brexit

Information on the UK's divorce from the EU, and what that means for IP rights, is becoming clearer, but many questions remain. Managing IP reports on the latest developments, offers pointers for IP practitioners and provides links to useful resources

According to German Patent Law the courts are bound by the grant of a patent by the respective Patent Office. In consequence thereof they cannot hold a patent as null and void: an action for declaration of non-infringement cannot be based on the lack of patentability of the patent. However, a defence against an infringement action is possible by pleading that according to the state of the art the infringing object is covered by that state of the art or an obvious derivation of it and therefore cannot fall under the scope of the patent if that patent (the claims) would otherwise be infringed only in an equivalent way. But such a defence is consequently denied if the claims would be infringed literally – because then that defence based on prior art is equivalent to a claim of nullity of a patent which the courts are not allowed to judge due to the concept of bifurcation. This sort of defence, namely that the infringing object is made according to prior art, is called in Germany Formsteineinwand after a decision of the German Supreme Court ruling on such a defence.