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In March this year we reported that a draft patent law was before the Cabinet and had been made available to the public on the Patent Office website. Since then further work has been done on the draft and it has moved closer to a document that may meet Syria's various international obligations and agreements, both present and future.

The Swiss Federal Administrative Court has held the mark Java Monster unregistrable for beverages in class 32.

The High Court reviewed the meaning of an "earlier trade mark" in coming to its recent appeal decision in an opposition case.

The Russian Patent Office recently refused registration of the trade mark Valenti Men's Collection on application No 2006736337 in respect of goods of class 25 and services of class 35.

Recently, a Romanian court issued an innovative decision retaining the defendant's bad faith in filing a sign for registration as trade mark, even though the claimant had no previous rights over the respective sign, and has only scarcely used the sign before the registration by the other party.

The Intellectual Property Office (IPPhil) has just issued a call for comments from the copyright stakeholders for submission on or before October 22 2010, regarding proposed House Bill 47 which seeks to amend the IP Code or Republic Act 8293. The bill centres on copyright, and its salient points are as follows.

As of July 1 2010 a national representative for an applicant who is not a resident in Norway is no longer required. The earlier requirements for a national representative set out in The Norwegian Patents Act, Design Act and Trademark Act have been deleted. The right of being represented by a national representative is now regulated by the Public Administration Act, Section 12. The Norwegian Patents Act, Design Act and Trademark Act now provide a requirement of a correspondence address of the applicant or right holder, opponent or similar. If the applicant or right holder is represented by a national representative, the correspondence address is the address of the representative. The Norwegian Industrial Property Office will forward all communications to the correspondence address by regular mail. If the mail delivery of the communication fails due to errors in the correspondence address, any term set out in the communication will still continue to run. A notice of this communication will however be made public in the Norwegian Gazette.

The precise legal situation when it comes to the protection of intellectual property in the Caribbean territories of the Kingdom of the Netherlands is probably in the blind spot of most Dutch patent and trademark attorneys. A recent constitutional reform seems a good occasion to set the legal framework straight.

Recently, the Malaysian High Court adjudicated on the issue of ownership of a mark in cases where an entity (such as a local distributor or dealer), in a commercial relationship with the trade mark owner, attempts to register the mark in its own name. The case was especially significant for foreign companies that are on the verge of entering the market but are yet to register their trade marks in Malaysia.

International Non-Proprietary Names (INNs) are names for pharmaceutical substances or active pharmaceutical ingredients recognised as public property. They are treated as generic names by international authorities, with around 8,000 published at present.