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In the first of a series of articles looking at hypothetical scenarios involving the UPC, Wouter Pors considers a case involving an implementation patent in the electronics industry

In a recent decision (Kochgefäß [Cooking pan], X ZR 81/13) the Federal Supreme Court (FSC) once again dealt with the requirements of an infringement under the doctrine of equivalence.

Supplementary protection certificates (SPCs) are issued under EU Regulation 469/2009 to compensate for lost patent time because of the pharmaceutical marketing authorisation procedure.

We often see unauthorised repeated filings of trade marks that are similar to other parties' well-known trade marks. Even though in most cases the proprietors of the well-known trade marks successfully cancel the conflicting trade mark at the Commercial Court and get a final and binding decision, it does not necessarily stop the conflicting party filing modified versions of the trade marks at the Trademark Office. However, things may be changing for the better, at least from the perspective of the Commercial Court.

On September 30 2015, the Mexican Internal Revenue Service published in the Official Federal Gazette updated foreign commerce dispositions including those applicable to products such as jewellery, clothing, footwear, tobacco products, alcoholic beverages, pharmaceuticals and software, regarding the obligation to state the principal word mark, design, name-and-design or three-dimensional mark in the manifesto exhibited to Customs. The effective date of the dispositions was November 1.

Austria, like Germany, has had for many decades a dual system for judging patent infringement: infringement itself is the realm of the Commercial Courts (or Penal Courts) while nullity of the underlying patent can only be stated by the Patent Office and its Appellate Courts. Such a nullity decision has then an effect erga omnes which means that the patent is struck out of the registers. That split is mitigated in that the Appeal Courts judging the infringement question are the same as those for the Patent Office decisions and usually decide on nullity prior to their judgment concerning infringement. Only in the proceeding for an interlocutory injunction has the Court to judge nullity of the patent itself as a preliminary question. But very often the patent is upheld in this procedure and the percentage of uncertainty of the Court about it is expressed by the level of security payment imposed on the plaintiff.

The Australian Appeal Court has recently clarified the position of software and business method patents in Australia. In Commissioner of Patents v RPL Central Pty Ltd, the Full Federal Court again aligned Australia with a US-centric position akin to that set out in the Alice Corporation case.

As of January 1 2016, Law 4335/2015 has come into force. This law was passed in the context of structural reforms imposed by Greece's creditors as a condition to the bailout with an objective to accelerate judicial proceedings and includes important amendments to the code of civil procedure.

Africa is a haven for counterfeiters. Yet things are changing. With the World Health Organisation estimating that 30% of the pharmaceutical market in Africa is counterfeit, African governments understand that counterfeiting creates public health, fiscal and societal problems. They know that they need to provide effective IP enforcement measures. Such measures now feature prominently in much of the new IP legislation in Africa. We will look at a few countries.

On September 29 2015, the Philippines deposited its instrument of accession to the Nagoya Protocol on Access to Genetic Resources and the Fair and Equitable Sharing of Benefits Arising from their Utilization to the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) which entered into force on December 28 2015. The Protocol is a supplementary agreement to the 1992 CBD, and the latter's instrument for the implementation of its third objective, the fair and equitable sharing of benefits arising from the utilization of genetic resources with the end view of contributing to the conservation of biological diversity and sustainable development and human well-being.