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How could blockchain help fashion and other IP-intensive industries? Ruth Burstall and Birgit Clark investigate its potential use in registration, tracking, enforcement and payment

On June 30, after nine years of negotiations, Vietnam and the European Union officially signed the landmark EU-Vietnam Free Trade Agreement (EVFTA), an ambitious and progressive agreement that includes important provisions on intellectual property.

On April 26 2019, the Supreme People's Court (SPC) issued special rules on its technical patent investigators (provisions), effective as of May 1 2019, which formally stipulate the procedures, duties and liabilities related to the participation of technical investigators in the trial of IP cases. The issuing of the provisions is also an acknowledgement of the successful trial run of the technical investigator system in the last four years.

Increasingly, law firms strive for a solely digital file system without significant use of paper files. A fully digital deadline management system seems to be the logical consequence.

The Intellectual Property Office of Singapore (IPOS), Lloyd's Asia, and Antares Underwriting Asia have launched an initiative to support innovative enterprises as they enter global markets. Called the Intellectual Property Insurance Initiative for Innovators (IPIII), the programme will give innovative enterprises access to insurance coverage for legal expenses that may be incurred in intellectual property (IP) infringement proceedings worldwide.

As Taiwan is not a signatory to the Budapest Treaty, the effect of a deposit made in an international depositary under the Budapest Treaty is generally not recognised in Taiwan. Accordingly, even though a biological material has been deposited in an international depositary in order to meet the enabling requirement, the applicant is still required to make a corresponding deposit in a domestic depositary designated by the Taiwan Intellectual Property Office (TIPO). A late deposit will be deemed valid only if the certificates of deposit issued by both the international and domestic depositaries are filed before a statutory deadline, i.e. within four months from the filing date or sixteen months from the earliest priority date claimed, whichever is applicable. Further, in the event that a deposit is deemed invalid, the applicant may file a request for reinstatement of the deposit procedure within thirty days from the day following the cessation of the cause for delay.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his political party Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), once again won the elections with a clear majority and formed the government in May 2019. This is the party's second term in a row. Interestingly, during the election campaign, one of the adverts released entitled "Transforming India's IP Landscape" counted, among others, the following achievements:

We have previously discussed Myanmar's new law on trademarks. It should also be noted that the same law is also the primary legislation on the protection of geographical indications (GIs) in Myanmar. Chapter 16 (Sections 53 to 60) of the Pyidaungsu Hluttaw Law No. 3 of 2019, fully titled the Trademark and Geographical Indications Law (TGIL), deals exclusively with GIs, and this is our summary of its contents, as well as our recommendations for those interested in registering GIs in Myanmar under the TGIL.

Precision medicine, also known as personalised medicine, is an emerging field in healthcare and seems to have a promising future as it accounts for 42% of new molecular entities which the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved in 2018. Since precision medicine aims to provide bespoke medical treatments based on individual patient's characteristics, it essentially incorporates diagnosis and treatment methods. Under Korean patent law and practice, treatment and diagnosis methods are not considered patent eligible subject matter. As such, it is necessary to circumvent restrictive eligibility requirements to obtain protection for precision medicines in Korea. In the past, although precision medicines can be pursued as a pharmaceutical/diagnostic composition claim, it was not easy to claim methodological aspects of precision medicines (e.g. dosage regimen) which were not considered as technical features constituting composition itself (Supreme Court decisions 2007Hu2926 and 2007Hu2933, rendered on May 28 2009).

Foreign applications for trademarks and designs are on the up, according to the UKIPO’s annual report, which also shows a decline in patent applications and a focus on workplace wellbeing