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On January 17 2018, the Intellectual Property Office of the Philippines issued its Guidelines on the Examination of Information Communications Technology (ICT) and Computer Implemented Inventions (CII), as a result of increasing demand for patent protection in these fields. In the past, patent examiners applied the general guidelines for patent examination, but difficulties encountered by patent examiners resulting in inconsistent decisions on patent grants and refusals necessitated the issuance of separate examination guidelines. These guidelines do not have the force of law but are meant to assist the examiners in determining whether the claimed inventions comply with the substantive law (Sections 21 and 22 of the Intellectual Property Code of the Philippines (IP Code) and its Implementing Rules 201 and 202).

Filing a utility model application for an invention can be a quick way to obtain patent rights in Taiwan. A utility model application will mature into a registration with a duration of 10 years from the filing date as soon as the formality requirements are fulfilled. However, as a utility model application filed in Taiwan is not subject to a substantive examination looking at novelty and inventive step, before a utility model patent holder can enforce his right against an infringer, he needs to ask Taiwan's IP Office to produce a technical evaluation report in which prior art references are cited (if any) and the relevance of these to each claim is specified. The scope of the claims of a utility model patent might need to be restricted in light of the references cited by the IP Office.

When handling applications before the European Patent Office (EPO), we frequently encounter enquiries regarding the speed of examination. While the EPO has recently increased the speed at which it conducts examination, individual national patent applications are still the fastest method of progressing an application to grant.

People have generally thought of China as a first to file country in the area of trade mark protection. Filing and registration of trade marks are emphasised in the jurisdiction. However, new trade mark law that came into force on May 1 2014 shed more light on trade mark use. Trade mark use, if not fundamental in China, is becoming more and more important and may be even more significant in the future.

Tish Berard, the new president of the International Trademark Association, discusses the association’s plans for 2018 in an interview with Ellie Mertens

A decree has changed the rules for intellectual property in Argentina, quite drastically in some instances. Iris V Quadrio, Martín Bensadon and Iván A Poli analyse the most important modifications

A non-use court action is routine for the IP court. Every year several hundred cases are considered and granted. Sometimes, however, a cancellation action stumbles at unexpected obstacles.

In recent decisions, two different single judges of the Delhi High Court, while adjudicating trade mark infringement and/or passing off cases involving online transactions, interpreted Section 20(c) of the Code of Civil Procedure 1908. The judges asserted that every suit should be brought in a court in whose jurisdiction the cause of action, wholly or in part, arises. They also reiterated that the court will have territorial jurisdiction to decide on such cases only where the plaintiff is able to establish that the defendant has entered into a commercial transaction using a website with a user within the forum state. This must have resulted in injury or harm to the plaintiff within the forum state.

In Teksystems v Teksavvy Solutions, the US District Court for the District of Maryland addressed the issue of whether a party's threat to initiate a cancellation action against a trade mark registration before the US Trademark Trial and Appeal Board (TTAB) was sufficient to create a case or controversy which provides a basis upon which a party may seek a declaratory judgment concerning the validity of a mark.

In the chemical and biotech sector, China's State Intellectual Property Office (SIPO) and courts have been extremely strict when it comes to accepting supplementation of post-filing data during prosecution, invalidation or administrative litigation proceedings. The amended Patent Examination Guideline, which took effect on April 1 2017 seemed to provide some principles for the data supplementation issue. According to this, experimental data submitted after the filing date shall be analysed by the examiners. The technical effects to be testified by the supplemented experimental data should be such that a person skilled in the art can derive from the disclosure of the patent application. However, from such wording, it is still unclear to the applicant or patentee what the technical effect derivable from the disclosure of the patent application means exactly.