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The Malaysian Patents Act 1983 requires that an invention, to be patentable, should be new, involving an inventive step and industrially applicable. Section 13 (1) (b) of the Act lists non-patentable inventions and it excludes the patentability of plant or animal varieties or essentially biological products for the production of plants or animals, other than man-made living microorganisms, micro-biological processes and the products of such microorganism processes.

In recent years the Japanese IP High Court and the Board of Patent Appeals (BPA) at the Japan Patent Office have rejected many patent applications and also nullified many granted patents by simply using an obvious-to-try reasoning to prove obviousness. This has received heavy criticism from the industry and the bar groups in Japan.

Four months after they were introduced, the impact of the recent rules on the protection of Made In Italy is encouraging.

A good portion of the practice of most IP law firms is in litigating against parties that infringe on US patents. But it is important to understand that infringement may occur in three different forms: direct infringement, inducement of infringement and contributory infringement.

Section 6 of the Thai Trade Mark Act stipulates that a mark must be distinctive in order to be registrable. Section 7 (2) specifies that the word or clause employed in a mark must not directly refer to the character or quality of the goods. When examining a mark's potential descriptiveness, registrars usually use standard print dictionaries as their main reference. With recent technological advances, however, registrars have also begun to use internet sources to determine the meaning of some trade marks. Of course, the reliability of these online dictionaries may be called into question.

The Supreme Court has set important precedents on business method patents in Korea by hearing two cases.

The Indonesian government's IP enforcement team, known locally as TimNas, has begun the process of consulting with stakeholders about its IP enforcement strategy for 2010.

The German Federal Court of Justice (FCJ) has repeatedly emphasised in a series of decisions (Seitenspiegel, 2005; Kettenradanordnung, 2007) that the interpretation of a patent claim is a question of law and thus may not be committed to the court expert, but is the original duty of the court.

Confidential information relating can take the form of any business formula, process, R&D capabilities, client-related or operational information that ought to be protected as a trade secret. Any breach in handling such confidential information violates the IP rights of the concerned party and has been pursued through the courts on many occasions. The Delhi High Court has deliberated on the misuse of confidential information relating to industrial drawings and the grant of permanent injunction to restrain those drawings in case of Action Construction Equipment v Gulati Industrial Fabric P Ltd IA no 10073/2006 IN CS(OS) no 1740/2006.

The Enlarged Board of Appeal (EBA) of the EPO has recently decided case G 1/07 dealing with the exclusion from patentability of surgical methods.