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Michelle Umberger and Lissa Koop analyse district court stays pending IPR or CBM and provide tips for seeking stays

Protecting trade marks and other IP rights in the supply chain presents growing challenges to companies, in part due to increasing demand by unscrupulous traders seeking "genuine" product at low prices for sale online.

On October 6 2016, the Turkish Patent Institute (TPI) has been appointed as an International Searching Authority (ISA) and International Preliminary Examining Authority (IPEA) under the Patent Cooperation Treaty (PCT) during the 56th series of Meetings of the Assemblies of the Member States of WIPO.

On August 3 2016, the Supreme Court, in GR 184008 docketed as Indian Chamber of Commerce of the Phils Inc (ICCPI) v Filipino-Indian Chamber of Commerce in the Philippines, Inc (FICCPI), affirming the decisions of the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and the Court of Appeals (CA), ruled that ICCPI is identical and deceptively or confusingly similar to FICCPI, and that the latter has a better right to the FICCPI name.

Foreign companies cannot ignore the risk of being involved in Japanese IP litigation when they conduct transactions where their products are intended to be distributed in Japan or when they perform sales activities for the Japanese market.

In the recent case of Paul Nduba v Hon Attorney General and The Anti-Counterfeit Agency, a Kenyan court ruled that the provisions of the Kenyan Anti-Counterfeit Act (ACA) are constitutional. The facts were that the Anti-Counterfeit Agency had conducted a raid on a shop and seized what it believed was counterfeit clothing. Brands involved included Puma, Nike, Adidas and Jeep. The shop owner was present during the raid, the goods seized were itemised, and the shop owner signed an inventory. The shop owner then went to court to challenge the legality of the search and seizure.

Vietnam, like many other countries in the world, has an open policy on the registration and use of its country code top-level domain name, .vn. Accordingly, any individual or organisation, whether domestic or foreign, whether present in Vietnam or not, has the right to register and subsequently use domain names ending in .vn.

In Trader Joe's Company v Michael Norman Hallatt d/b/a Pirate Joe's, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals issued a decision which granted Trader Joe's the right to pursue claims for trade mark infringement under the Lanham Act against activity that occurred in Canada.

The well-known optical retail chain Specsavers have been hitting the headlines in the UK again. This time it is not for their successful court battles with British supermarket retailer and Wal-Mart subsidiary, Asda, which set an important precedent for the protection of colour trade marks, but for filing an application with the UK Intellectual Property Office (UKIPO) to have Should've and Shouldve registered as trade marks in classes 9, 10, 16, 35, and 44.

About a year ago, news about the copying of a design belonging to the indigenous community of Santa Maria Tlahuitoltepec ("Mixes community"), in the State of Oaxaca, Mexico, by Isabel Marant (a famous fashion designer) caused great controversy in social media.