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On June 12 2018, Vietnam passed a new Law on Competition that will take effect on July 1 2019, replacing the Law on Competition of 2004. The new law brings about several changes affecting intellectual property. Notably, it eliminates many of the discrepancies between the current 2004 Competition Law and the Intellectual Property Law in dealing with IP-related unfair competition.

One Belt One Road (OBOR) is a government initiative proposed by China's President Xi Jinping in September 2013 for joint economic development spanning 65 countries. OBOR is a proposed economic belt along the land-based historic silk road and the 21st Century maritime silk road from Asia to Europe, through South East Asia, South Asia, Central Asia, West Asia and the Middle East. This initiative aims to improve connectivity and cooperation between countries in this region in order to promote trade exchanges in this area. This briefing examines intellectual property strategies that may be adopted by foreign companies, particularly by Chinese companies trading in Malaysia to keep their IP risks under control.

Early this year, the Mexican Institute of Industrial Property issued decisions denying registration for the trade mark PINCHE GRINGO BBQ & Design in classes 43 (restaurants) and 30 (sauces). The grounds of denial were a supposed violation of Article 4 of Mexican IP Law, which states that no patents, registrations or authorisations are to be granted for any legal figures or institutions regulated by this law, when the contents of an application are contrary to public order, morals and good customs.

Ten years ago the Austrian Supreme Court decided a case concerning Mazda and a tuning company. The tuning company had offered its chip tuning parts for a range of cars. It also named on its website the car types for which it offered these chips. For that it used the cars' word marks and the figurative marks (logos).

A French court issued a ruling on April 13 2018 concerning the photographs of Chambord Castle used by Kronenbourg breweries in the context of an advertising campaign for one of their beers.

Many food products contain known ingredients, rather than novel ingredients, as essential components. Such food products are usually a result of combining components in a special ratio to achieve a particular flavour, taste, effect, etc.

Although the amount of patent litigation in Brazil is far from the level of litigation in the US, patent infringement actions are very common in the jurisdiction. Such actions are the most effective measure against infringers, since preliminary injunctions are widely available. This makes Brazil very attractive as an additional battlefield for worldwide patent disputes.

Mexico’s industrial property law has been amended to include more types of trade marks. It also introduces some small changes that bring Mexico’s trade mark system more in line with the US and beyond

Google has already said it will appeal to the Supreme Court in the latest development in the dispute over unauthorised use of 37 packages of Oracle’s Java application programming interface

IP practitioners are concerned that the WTO ruling on plain packaging encroaches on IP rights and could spell trouble for other industries