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In two decisions rendered by the Romanian Trade Mark Office (TMO) in June 2016, the examiners found that two national applications depicting fictional characters were lacking distinctive character and therefore rejected their registration in Romania for the generic class headings of the goods and services in classes 7, 9, 28, 35, 37 and 42 of the International Nice Classification.

Which courts have jurisdiction over online sales or offering to sale of infringing goods is becoming a perplexing issue in today's China IP practice. According to some of the latest decisions, different courts take different positions with some valid reasons, especially among the three specialised IP courts in Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou. The Supreme People's Court has made some efforts, but no binding decisions have come out yet on this particular issue. It is important to monitor the development in this area closely and adapt to the changes in the patent enforcement strategy.

October 4 2016 marked a new milestone for the IP arena in Singapore and India, as Singapore's Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong and India's Prime Minister Narendra Modi witnessed the signing of a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) between the Intellectual Property Office of Singapore (IPOS) and the Department of Industrial Policy & Promotion (DIPP) of India. The signing was one of the highlights of the Singapore leader's October visit to New Delhi. This agreement aims to promote creativity, innovation and technological growth in both countries, while expanding bilateral collaboration activities in IP rights, including patents, trade marks and industrial designs.

In case of a patent infringement, the patentee normally has an interest not only in obtaining damages from the infringer, but also that the infringer immediately stops the infringing action. A request for an injunctive relief against the infringer is therefore standard practice in patent litigation. In such a situation the infringer may have an interest in being granted a grace period in order to gain time to find a bypass solution or to deplete his stock of infringing products. Such a grace period for the infringer, known from copyright or competition law cases, has also been discussed in patent law literature as an exceptional measure. It may be granted by a court if an immediate cessation of sales of the infringing product were to lead to disproportionate disadvantages for the infringer. Granting such a grace period requires reflecting the overall circumstances of the individual case, and such a limited continuation of the infringing action must not cause unacceptable adverse effects on the infringed party.

From January 1 this year, the Korean Patent Court became the exclusive appellate court for IP related cases (see February issue). After this change, the Patent Court released some guidelines on the rules and procedures applicable to IP cases. The most recent is the "Guideline of Civil Practice and Procedure of the Patent Court of Korea" (the Guideline), which was published in English and Japanese.

Federal Circuit and district court rulings interpreting the Supreme Court’s Halo opinion on enhanced damages were analysed in a webinar presented by Managing IP and Fitzpatrick

Medtronic has been ordered to pay $20.4m in damages by an Eastern District of Texas jury for infringing a doctor’s patents related to idiopathic scoliosis treatment

A recent Chilean Supreme Court ruling involving German sports company Puma and a network of schools may send a message to international trade mark owners not to bring technical issues before the court instead of matters of law

A new study by the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) has revealed an increase in the number of women participating in international patent filings. In the last 20 years, researchers found that the percentage of PCT applications featuring women has increased from 17% to 29%

Founding members of The Turtles settling with SiriusXM, the end of a copyright case against Usher and Justin Bieber, an increase in women inventors on international patent applications, Donald Trump registering a trade mark in China, Amazon suing over counterfeit goods for the first time, and US companies doubling trade mark applications in Cuba were in the recent intellectual property headlines