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On March 2 2017, the State Intellectual Property Office (SIPO) of China announced its decision to amend the Patent Examination Guidelines, effective as of April 1 2017. The new Guidelines provide significant changes to software patents, data supplementation for pharmaceutical patents and claim amendments in the invalidation procedures.

According to German Patent Law the courts are bound by the grant of a patent by the respective Patent Office. In consequence thereof they cannot hold a patent as null and void: an action for declaration of non-infringement cannot be based on the lack of patentability of the patent. However, a defence against an infringement action is possible by pleading that according to the state of the art the infringing object is covered by that state of the art or an obvious derivation of it and therefore cannot fall under the scope of the patent if that patent (the claims) would otherwise be infringed only in an equivalent way. But such a defence is consequently denied if the claims would be infringed literally – because then that defence based on prior art is equivalent to a claim of nullity of a patent which the courts are not allowed to judge due to the concept of bifurcation. This sort of defence, namely that the infringing object is made according to prior art, is called in Germany Formsteineinwand after a decision of the German Supreme Court ruling on such a defence.

Apple has had its trade mark Sherlock revoked by the Intellectual Property Office of Singapore in a recent case which reinforces the need for trade mark owners to establish evidence of genuine use of their mark – or risk losing it.

In Germany, products that are directly obtained by a patent-protected process are entitled to patent protection according to Section 9, Sentence 2 (3) PatG, even if a claim directed to the product is lacking in the patent. To obtain extended protection, according to German practice, it is a necessary condition that the product as such would at least be accessible to patent protection.

It is natural to expect that when a company files a patent application it wants to obtain a patent, maintain it and obtain some profit from it. Sometimes the natural course of things is disrupted.

It has been approximately a decade since the Mexican Institute of Industrial Property (IMPI) adopted very strict criteria when assessing the likelihood of confusion between trade marks. As a result of this strict approach IMPI's trade mark examiners had some criteria that were troublesome, especially when marks including designs or associated to a concept were compared to each other.

In a recent decision, the Trademarks Administrative Commission ruled on a case regarding the infringement of a famous trade mark. In particular the applicant filed an application for the trademark Coco & Silk and device, covering goods in classes 14, 18 and 25. The opposing party, Chanel SARL, filed an opposition against the acceptance of this trade mark claiming infringement of its famous trade mark Coco covering goods in classes 14, 18 and 25. The applicant, in defence, claimed that the distinctiveness of its trade mark lies on the combination of the two words, Coco and Silk, as well as on the device contained in the opposed trade mark. To support its argument, it provided evidence that the word Coco forms part of several composite national trade marks belonging to third parties, covering similar goods in classes 14, 18 and 25, all of which co-exist. As claimed by the applicant, the existence of these trademarks proves that the word Coco is of weak distinctiveness.

IP rights – among which is the right of the trade mark owner– enable the holder to exploit with exclusivity certain intangible assets. Every time a misappropriation or trade mark infringement takes place, the owner of the trade mark that is subject to infringement also suffers damage, due to the simple fact that a third party is using a similar or identical trade mark without their consent.

The UKIPO has long provided the means for any third party to obtain an independent opinion on questions of validity and infringement in relation to granted UK and EP(UK) patents. More recently this service has been extended, for example by allowing additional grounds of invalidity to be raised, leading to a surge in its popularity among clients operating in the UK.

The Supreme Court has held that the designs in a cheerleading uniform satisfy the test for copyright protection in its Star Athletica v Varsity Brands ruling. Observers say the decision provides a standard test to be applied to the separability analysis