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A recent ruling of the General Court of the EU shed interesting light on the subject of genuine use of a Community trade mark (CTM). As to the aspect of the (geographical) extent of the use, the General Court appeared to apply a lower threshold than the Court of Justice of the EU suggested in its Leno Merken ruling from 2012. This should be good news for trade mark owners.

In Lupin Limited v Johnson and Johnson and Shakti Bhog Foods Limited v Parle Products Pvt Ltd, the Full Bench of the Bombay High Court, in a reference made to it on the question of law as to whether the court can go into the validity of the registered trade mark at an interlocutory stage in an infringement suit, has held that there is no bar to the jurisdiction and power of a civil court to consider the challenge to the validity of the trade mark at the interlocutory stage by way of prima facie findings.

Cross-border trade secret leakage has become common due to an expansion of international trade and exchange of human resources. The Supreme Court has clarified the criteria for recognising and executing a foreign judgment where a US company sought in the Japanese court the execution of a US judgment that ordered an injunction and damages on the ground of trade secret infringement under California law.

In recent New Zealand cases, there are interesting insights into protecting secondary marks, and how the courts respond when a mark has generally been used in conjunction with another mark.

Trade marks numbers 381529 and 281919 are for versions of a word trade mark Black Russian. An interested person filed an appeal against the registrations. The Patent Office accepted the appeal, stating that the disputed designation in regard to the goods cocktails in class 33 is of descriptive character and is a kind of goods because it reproduces the name of an alcoholic drink of a certain composition with a long history.

A dispute may arise if a distribution agreement does not include a clause relating to the disposition of inventory after termination of the agreement.

This is the second part of a two-part article introducing best practices in this sector. The first part focused on securing relevant IP. This part focuses on merchandise licensing arrangements.

The procedure of patent abandonment has been debated among IP attorneys, the Patent Office and the Ministry of Finance in the past few years.

Although second medical use patents are allowed and granted in Mexico, achieving the exclusive exploitation derived from this protection by the owner or licensee presents several challenges. As in other countries, there is legal uncertainty regarding how the owner can actually show infringement.

In order to promote a culture of fair competition in the region, ASEAN member states have committed to adopt in their own jurisdictions by 2015 competition law and policy, under the ASEAN Economic Community's (AEC) Blueprint. In his first state of the nation address in 2010, Philippine president Benigno Aquino III made the promulgation of an antitrust law a priority in his administration to ensure that the market is fair for all, allowing "small and medium scale enterprises to participate in the growth of our economy".