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2015 was the year when Scandinavia took two major steps towards full harmonisation of validation formalities in Sweden, Finland, Denmark and Norway regarding translation requirements and payment of fixed fees rather than fees depending on the number of pages of a validated patent.

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.

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.

The America Invents Act (AIA) of 2011 introduced a number of changes to the US patent system, including significantly increasing the options available for challenging the validity of a granted patent. Among these options it is the process of post grant review, a trial proceeding at the new Patent Trial and Appeal Board, which holds the most in common with opposition before the European Patent Office.

Of the total population of the Netherlands of 16.8 million people, 2.2 million have seen the final episode of the second season of "Heel Holland bakt". This makes it one of the most popular television shows in the Netherlands of the past few years.

The concept of establishing trade mark use plays a central role in brand protection. In addition to forming one of the requirements in trade mark infringement actions, establishing trade mark use mitigates the risk of expungement proceedings due to non-use.

A US company MD Science Lab filed a trade mark application number 2012718142 for Swiss Navy in respect of goods in class 5 (pharmaceuticals). The patent office refused the registration because the claimed designation includes the word element Swiss. In the opinion of the patent office the word "swiss" would be confusing with regard to the location of the applicant and place of production of goods because the applicant is a US resident. For the sake of justice it should be noted that not so many Russians would understand that this Latin word combination means.

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.

In 2010, the EPO introduced the PACE programme, which allowed applicants to accelerate prosecution of patent applications pending before the EPO. Under the PACE programme, the EPO would make every effort to issue a first examination communication within three months of the PACE request.