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The Australian Council of Intellectual Property (ACIP) has announced a review of the Innovation Patent System.

Some of the more vinophile IP enthusiasts might have heard of young Austrian wine called Junker coming from southern Styria. In 1986 some wineries from Styria joined together to sell the young white wine under a common name and a joint advertising campaign. An advertising agency developed the label Styrian Junker. The marketing of the new wine was so successful, more and more Styrian wine growers were interested in collaborating. This led to the establishment of the plaintiff, a common marketing agency, whose statutes state that it aims to protect and promote Styrian wine. In 1996 the trade mark Steirischer Junker (Styrian Junker) for wines (class 33) was applied for and registered; in 2004 the same word mark was registered for foods (class 30) without filing a proof of the reputation of the mark.

On September 1 2011, the Office of the Legislative Affairs of the State Council issued draft changes to the Trade Mark Law for comments. Several drafts had been circulated by the Chinese Trade Mark Office (CTMO) for comments some years ago, but that was followed by a long period of silence. The consultation period is rather short, only one month, and it ended on October 8 2011. The proposed key changes are the below.

Further to a decision that ruled the proceeding of allocation of domain names to be against the Constitution of France, the allocation and management of domain names for extension .fr must comply with the law. Indeed, a new legal framework for French domain names has been established by Law 2011-302 of March 22 2011. The decree relating to the management of first level domain names (.fr/.re/.mq) was issued on August 3 2011.

Essentially, filing nullification of a trade mark registration can be performed by the registered owner of the mark or on the initiative of the Directorate General. However, a third party may also be able to file for the nullification of a trade mark in the form of a lawsuit filed at the Commercial Court. Under the provision of Indonesian Trademark Law that registered mark can be removed if it has not been used for three consecutive years in the trade, from the date of registration or of the last use, except if there are proper reasons for non-use that are acceptable.

There is feverish activity at the Italian PTO, mostly for the concurrence of two new procedures, one referring to trade marks and the other to patents, which are being launched at the moment.

In the electronics and software fields, the applications that result in the most valuable patents are typically the ones filed early, before the market for the protected products grows. Patent visualisation is an inventing strategy aimed at systematically developing ideas from a very early stage to optimise the chances of filing patent applications at the critical time before market growth. Central to patent visualisation are the processes of brainstorming, in which an early-stage idea is developed through a series of questions, and theme determination, in which a technical area of focus is selected and tested to determine its potential to yield early inventions with respect to market growth. Patent visualisation is an opportunity for IP professionals to take on new roles and have a greater impact on the development of technology and the success of their companies.

Mr Justice Kitchin and Lord Justice Jacob were clear that HGS’s patent for the Neutrokine-a protein was invalid for lacking industrial application. But five Supreme Court judges today disagreed. Why?

The Norwegian Court of Appeal has decided that Trumf's Oliver chair infringes Stokke's copyright to the Tripp Trapp chair, and that use of the slogan "This great children's chair will grow with the child" infringes Stokke's use of established rights to the slogan "The chair that grows with the child".

A High Court decision in July this year ruled that a cafe chain's use of the name Nutello for a coffee beverage violated the Nutella trade mark.