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The Intellectual Property Office of Singapore (IPOS) announced a fee revision for patents and trade marks with effect from April 1 2017. Regarding patents, the application fees for searches or supplementary search reports, local search and examination reports, and international search and examination reports, are reduced by 14%, 25% and 37%, respectively. There is also a 30% fee reduction in the application to register trade marks that utilise the IPOS pre-approved list of goods and services. Thus, businesses and entrepreneurs will see a substantial fee reduction for patent and trade mark applications.

In the Vietnamese judicial system, there are two avenues for reviewing a court's final judgment. Under the current procedural legislation, if such judgment can be shown to be based on a serious error of law, it can go through the process of cassation, where the judgment will be reviewed and possibly annulled due to the material error in the procedure. If, on the other hand, new evidence or facts are discovered that could have affected the outcome of the case, the case can be retried.

Article 15 of Trademark Law of the People's Republic of China (PRC) states:

On February 27 2018, the top policy-making bodies in China (the General Office of the Party and the General Office of the Council) published an unprecedented policy roadmap for reforming the IP adjudication system (opinions). The opinions reveal much clearer thinking and critical measures for reforms and innovation in the IP adjudication system.

Aprinciple of patent law is the principle of territoriality. This concerns the limited validity and enforceability of the patent in national territory.

In a recent ruling by the Court of The Hague C/09/545302 / KG ZA 17-1636, Pfizer and Ono faced each other over an alleged abuse of German process law by Pfizer.

An example of an international trade mark that Austria considered for registration is Access the Inaccessible for goods and services all connected to mountaineering, climbing and work at height. This English language word mark had, among others, a designation for the UK and for Austria. In the UK, the trade mark was finally registered in spite of some difficulties. The Austrian Patent Office and the appellate court did not find it relevant that the mark was approved in the UK. Registration in a foreign country, even in a country where the relevant language is the official language spoken by the whole population, can never be binding for Austria. The reasons behind this are not only formal legal reasons (for example, territoriality), but also that the English authorities examine the trade mark from the viewpoint of English consumers while the Austrian authorities examine the same trade mark from the point of view of Austrian consumers. These perspectives might well be different since the understanding of the meaning of the foreign words might not be identical to that in a foreign country.

Paris will welcome the summer Olympic Games in 2024. This is a huge challenge for the Organising Committee.

China is on course to overtake the US in three years as the largest source of applications filed under WIPO’s Patent Cooperation Treaty. Trade mark filing under the Madrid System and design filing under the Hague System both increased in 2017

Patrick Wingrove rounds up recent intellectual property news, including the introduction of the Marrakesh Treaty and STRONGER Patents Act in US Congress, the Blurred Lines copyright appeal, amendments to Mexico’s IP law, Fujifilm winning at the ITC, and more