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The Taiwan Intellectual Property Office has, since January 1 2010, adopted an accelerated examination procedure for patent applications. According to the procedure, an applicant may, after the filing of a petition for substantive examination, request expedited examination of an application based on a foreign counterpart application that has been allowed or in which a search report has been received, or based on commercial use.

In Singapore, under the Singapore Patents Act, Section 29 provides three prosecution options:

It is a common practice among entrepreneurs in the fashion business to offer their customers goods marked with a famous brand on a principle called "total look". The principle consists in offering to customers not only clothing, but also the full set of accessories, such as handbags, watches and glasses. It may happen that a trade mark has been registered only for clothes and its protection does not cover other accessories. In spite of this, some customers see the existence of strict connections between the clothing and accompanying fashionable goods, and may think that those goods have been made by the same entrepreneur. The reason is that the goods complement each other and contribute to the creation of an overall image to a certain circle of customers. In such case, the protection may be extended to those accessories that are not covered by trade mark registration (see case T-443/05, El Corte Inglés/OHIM Bolaños Sabri, PiraÑAM diseño original Juan Bolaños). As frequently happens, the accompanying accessories are the elements that create and decide someone's personal image, giving that person an original character and originality.

On January 1 2011 Swiss civil procedural law will finally be unified when the Federal Code of Civil Procedure replaces the 26 cantonal civil procedures. With the new act, as before, each canton has to designate a single first instance court for IP cases, which is competent for hearing cases relating to infringement, validity, ownership, transfers and licences of IP. For patent cases only, this cantonal competence will end for validity and infringement cases (and for actions directed to the grant of a licence) on January 1 2012, when the Swiss Federal Patent Court of first instance will start its work. The president and the other judges of this new court have been elected by Parliament and work for establishing the court's infrastructure is under way.

On October 12 2010, the Supreme Court in the case docketed as AM 10-7-17-SC dismissed Petitioner Vinuya et al's charges of plagiarism, twisting of cited materials, and gross neglect against Supreme Court Justice Mariano C del Castillo, for lack of merit.

In its decision of November 2 2010, the Court of The Hague overturned a decision of first instance and ruled that the publication of a generic medicine in the so-called G-Standaard, constituted offering it with the intent of (subsequent) trading and thereby violated the exclusive right of the patent holder. The G-Standaard is a medicine database that is published by the Royal Dutch Association for the Advancement of Pharmacy.

From November 1 2010 it will be possible to register domain names under the sub-domain .co.no in Norway. For the first three months, only registrations by companies with a trade mark registration corresponding to the domain name will be accepted. The registrations are accepted based on a first-to-file principle. After three months anyone may apply for a registration of a domain name under .co.no. Having a place of business in Norway is not necessary.

Seong-Ki Kim and Kee-Hyo Kim of Lee International IP & Law Group consider possible updates to judicial procedure

Article 2-(1) of the Korean Patent Act defines an "invention" as the highly advanced creation of a technical idea utilising the law of nature. Whether a patent application utilises the law of nature is determined by considering all claims. Partially utilising the laws of nature is not enough and any such invention would not be patentable.

Patent litigation in Malaysia is rare and not popular amongst Malaysian companies, the more so when the dispute involves both patent and passing-off. The case of SKB Shutters Manufacturing v Seng Kong Shutter Industries and Anor, which was decided by the Kuala Lumpur High Court on October 4 2010, is one such exception.