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In Covertech Fabricating, Inc v TVM Building Products, Inc et al, the Third Circuit Court of Appeals resolved a dispute between a manufacturer and its exclusive distributor regarding which party owned an unregistered trade mark when there was no written contract in place between the parties. In doing so, the Court established a test that manufacturers and distributors might apply to determine ownership of a trade mark.

According to Article 59 of the Chinese Patent Law the specification and drawings related to a patent right may be used in claim construction. However, it has long been a question as to whether claims are to be construed based on claim language alone without referring to the specification and drawings, or whether the content of the specification and drawings shall be read to limit or otherwise be used to illustrate the scope of claims. In a recently decided case (number 2016-XingZai-70), the Supreme Court of China held that the content of the specification and drawings was not allowed to be read into the claims, and that claims were to be construed in a narrow sense.

Bad faith trade mark filings are not uncommon in Vietnam. In fact, bad faith is often included under the label of "dishonesty basis" as a ground for opposition or cancellation of a trade mark application/registration. Generally speaking, bad faith is deemed to occur when an applicant intentionally registers a trade mark to benefit from the goodwill and reputation associated with the trade mark of another owner.

Utynam was pleased to attend Managing IP's IP in Asia forums in Washington DC and Palo Alto last month, which focused on the latest IP developments in China, Japan and Korea.

One of the EPO's Technical Boards of Appeal has recently reminded the community of the front-loaded nature of inter partes opposition proceedings. In proceedings leading to decision T 2193/14 dated 14 March 2017 and made publicly available on May 11 2017, the opponent was deprived of the possibility of having certain prior art citations considered which purportedly were relevant for the assessment of non-obviousness. The Board of Appeal denied the admissibility into the proceedings of the aforementioned citations, which were submitted by the opponent on appeal only, and eventually confirmed the patentability of the claimed subject-matter without having considered the citations in question on their substantive merits.

The recent case of IPC Global Pty Ltd v Pavetest Pty Ltd (No 3) [2017] FCA 82, provides a textbook example of how not to create a competitive start-up.

The US Supreme Court in Sandoz v Amgen remanded the question of whether an injunction is available to Amgen under state unfair competition laws. Natalie Rahhal analyses how the Federal Circuit may rule

The US Supreme Court ruled on eight intellectual property cases this term. Get up to speed with our overview of the cases and links to our analysis of the decisions and arguments

A ruling in the Jersey Boys copyright dispute, a $235m award to GlaxoSmithKline, the end of Gene Simmons’ efforts to register a hand gesture as a trade mark, a process to add Yoko Ono to Imagine’s songwriting credits, the top 100 universities granted patents and amendments to Texas trade secrets law were in the intellectual property news in the past week

In China, just like in most countries, registration is the quickest and cheapest means to get trademark protection: just 9 months and 100 $. Normally, you have no reason not to register if you really want to be protected.