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The opening of Myanmar’s economy presents many opportunities for international brands. Tran Manh Hung and Luc Tung Phong explain how companies can use franchising agreements to enter the market

The key legislation that governs intellectual property in Laos is Law No 01/NA of December 20 2011, on Intellectual Property, as amended. Under the IP Law, trade mark owners can bring an administrative action, through the Department of Intellectual Property Rights (DIPR), against a shop that sells counterfeit products. This is the most effective anti-counterfeiting measure in Laos.

In Solid 21 v Hublot of America, et al, the US District Court for the Central District of California issued a ruling holding that once a term has become generic, it is always generic and cannot be the subject of trade mark protection under any circumstances even if the purported owner can demonstrate secondary meaning in that term.

A warning letter is a tool normally first used by an IP owner to enforce its IP rights before a complaint is filed. However, some recent development in China probably would increase an IP owner's caution of sending out a warning letter.

Generally, the law prohibits registration of trade marks lacking distinctiveness. However sometimes this rule can be waived. There is an international trade mark registration number 1140887 (see picture).

In the case of Dura-Mine Sdn Bhd v Elster Metering Ltd & Anor [2015] 1 CLJ 887, the Federal Court of Malaysia conclusively decided that the exact original copies of artistic works were not required for the purposes of establishing prima facie evidence of ownership of copyright under the "true copy" requirement within Section 42(1)(a)(iii) of the Copyright Act 1987, and applied the common law position that copyright is not limited to the first or earliest work.

Africa is one of the economic success stories of our time: its economy has trebled since 2000; the growth forecast is in the order of 5%; it houses nine of the 15 fastest growing economies; and the emphasis is fast shifting from commodities to consumer spending, making it attractive for manufacturers of consumer goods. Hence the term 'Africa rising'.

In Taiwan, the determination of patent validity is a dual-track system. According to the Intellectual Property Case Adjudication Act, the IP Court will independently rule on patent validity issues in IP-related civil procedures. On the other hand, an alleged infringing party can file an invalidation action with the IP Office to challenge the validity of the patent in accordance with the Patent Law. When the validity of a patent is determined differently in final conclusive civil and administrative decisions, how the issues would be dealt with has thus received much attention. In this regard, in a recent rehearing case relating to a civil patent infringement litigation, the IP Court and the Supreme Court came to different opinions.

On August 6, the Decree of the President of the Republic number 90/2015 ratifying the Agreement on a Unified Patent Court signed in Brussels on February 19 2013 was published in the Official Journal of the Portuguese Republic.

By its interlocutory decision dated July 17 2015 (T 557/13), one of the EPO's chemical boards of appeal has referred the issue of so-called self-collision or toxic divisional to the Enlarged Board of Appeal. In essence, the questions to be addressed by the Enlarged Board relate to possible citability under article 54(3) EPC of a parent application against its own divisional or vice versa. Such citability is in principle rendered possible if the following conditions are met: