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It is widely known that amendments to the Mexican Law of Industrial Property which have an impact on trade marks came into full force on August 10 2018. Especially relevant is the Declaration of Effective Use (DOU) to preserve trade mark protection. A first DOU is provided for those registrations granted from August 10 2018 and must be filed within three months of the third anniversary of the date of grant of the registration. Failure to file the DOU will cause the registration to lapse. In turn, for renewal purposes, a DOU must be filed. In both cases the DOU's must specify the goods/services for which the trade mark is effectively in use in Mexico. Protection will remain only for those specific goods or services.

The Global Innovation Index 2018 report released in July 2018 ranked Singapore fifth among 126 innovative nations around the world. Singapore retained its first place ranking in Asia for the fifth year running and is only found to be less innovative than Switzerland, the Netherlands, Sweden and the UK. Singapore's strong performance in the Global Innovation Index is attributed to the various government initiatives and programmes launched to spur and protect innovation in the city-state.

Malawi deposited its instrument of accession to the Madrid Protocol on September 25 2018, and the country will formally become a member of the international trade mark registration system on December 25 2018. Malawi has also posted the necessary declarations to make it clear that the refusal period will be 18 months, that mere intention to use is sufficient, and that the recording of licences in the international register has no effect in Malawi.

In early 2018, a radical change to civil procedure was introduced as a result of Law 4512/2018. The change relates to compulsory mediation as an obligatory pre-trial stage for certain civil and commercial disputes. IP-related cases are included in these. Thus, before the filing of any IP-related main action lawsuit, the claimant must follow the designated mediation process, so that there is no procedural impediment to the trial. These legal provisions were scheduled to apply to any main action lawsuits filed from October 17 2018.

In 2015, the Korean Supreme Court cleared the patent eligibility hurdle for dosage regimen inventions, and announced that dosage regimens are patentable if they satisfy other patentability requirements including novelty and inventiveness (Supreme Court en banc decision 2014Hu768, May 21 2015). In the first case where the inventiveness of a dosage invention was at issue (Patent Court decision 2015Heo7889, February 3 2017), the Korean Patent Court denied inventiveness on the ground that optimising dosage regimens to achieve the reduction of toxicity or improvement of efficacy is considered routine experimentation or work of a person having ordinary skill in the art (PHOSITA). This shows that Korea has a strict standard for the inventiveness of dosage regimen patents.

Jurisprudence has had fixed rules for a long time on the reconditioning of pharmaceutical products by parallel importers, without the consent of the trade mark owner.

NDAs, exit interviews, the DTSA and best practices were some of the trade secrets issues on which speakers offered advice at the Trade Secrets Forum 2018

The owner of an internet connection used for copyright infringement through file-sharing cannot escape liability by naming a family member who may have used the connection, the CJEU holds

Dyan Finguerra-DuCharme and Giovanna Marchese explore the circumstances under which jewellery may qualify for protection under US copyright and trade mark laws and discuss the shortcomings associated with each

Managing IP is compiling its list of the 50 most influential people in intellectual property. Who do you think should be included?