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An applicant recently filed a trade mark application for Библейский Хлеб (Biblical Bread) in Cyrrilic. The Patent Office rejected the application, the decision was appealed at the Chamber of Patent Disputes and the Chamber sided with the examiner of the Patent Office. One of the reasons for rejection was that the designation Библейский Хлеб indicates a certain product and the composition of the product used by many bakeries in Russia. The decision of the Chamber also explained that the claimed designation has a marked religious connotation. The Bible is a sacred book and the use of the associated word for marking any goods may mean that consumers think those goods are produced by persons who have a direct connection to some religion.

Article 10.2 of the Taiwan Fair Trade Act stipulates that no monopolistic enterprise can improperly set, maintain or change the price for goods or the remuneration for services. If a royalty agreement is deemed a violation of that article by the Supreme Administrative Court in a dispute, does the agreement still have legal effect?

Two decisions by the newly established Swiss Federal Patent Court have made clear the Court's position that a plaintiff's request for a cease-and-desist order shall not consist of the wording of the patent claim. The Court confirms the view of the Swiss Federal Court that the subject matter of the infringing procedure is the question of whether the defendant's product with its specific structural or method details uses the claimed technical teaching of the patent.

In the eyes of the law, a company is a separate legal entity from its members and directors. The acts of a company, including any wrongful acts are attributable to, and liability therefore rests with, the company as a separate entity and not with its members or directors. This principle from the Salomon case, that there is a "corporate veil" between a company itself and its members or directors, is a well-entrenched principle of company law and the Malaysian courts are bound to abide by it unless there are cogent reasons to depart from it.

Having spent years litigating IP matters, I have shared the frustration of clients who have been forced to intervene in administrative litigation because they are being frivolously accused of having committed an administrative infringement; their trademarks have been misappropriated; or their IP rights are being attacked in an ungrounded manner, through counterclaims that are filed in response to infringement actions previously filed by the owner of the IP right.

Office actions are issued by the Thai Department of Intellectual Property (DIP) on grounds of non-distinctiveness or identical/similar character to a well-known and/or registered mark. However, the procedure for evaluating the response is different from other jurisdictions, making Thailand a difficult territory for IP protection.

While we're all debating how websites that aid the sharing of copyright-infringing content should be controlled, we might as well have some fun, right? It was in this spirit that Utynam read file-sharing website PirateBay's response to a cease and desist letter from games company EA. And it is the spirit in which he reproduces some of it here. Because it is very funny.

US trade mark law offers parties the ability to oppose the registration of a mark that is considered to be primarily geographically deceptively misdescriptive. That is, a mark that consists of a term that has a geographic significance but is used in connection with products that do not originate from that location. This right is embedded in US law because any mark which is likely to cause consumers to believe that the goods sold under the mark originate from a geographic place when they do not, in fact, originate there, is potentially misleading. Similarly, a party that actually offers products from the geographic location identified may be damaged if a competitor is allowed to use and register that location as a mark for products originating elsewhere.

Most co-marketing and co-promotion deals in developed markets fail within five years. Richard Bird and Ma Ya explain how to structure deals that will succeed in China

Colombia has deposited its instrument of accession with WIPO as part of the process to join the Madrid system on international trade mark registration