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In one of the first major cases on design infringement in Romania, the Bucharest Tribunal has convicted a Romanian company found to infringe the rights of Microfibers to pay €210,000 as damages, as well as approximately €19,000 per trial expenses.

The design of packaging will often be very important and valuable for a manufacturer in order to distinguish its goods in today's market. Mast-Jägermeister recently succeeded in its efforts to achieve protection for its bottle design (without a label) as a three-dimensional trade mark in Norway.

A court in the Netherlands has briefly allowed LG Electronics to seize the entire supply of Sony's Playstation 3 (PS3) in the Netherlands. The seizure was based on infringement of an LG patent on the Blu-ray player in the PS3. The order was given ex parte, without first hearing Sony. In subsequent inter parte proceedings, another court lifted the seizure.

It happened to Tylenol, Firestone and Vioxx. What can trade mark counsel do to minimise the effect of a product recall on a brand?

The Milo mark The device mark The terms chocolate and malt drink immediately conjure up images of Nestlé's popular beverage Milo. The drink has been so popular that the company often projects very large market share figures. Although the beverage itself and the term Milo have been used for over half a century, the evolution of the brand and the logo witnessed the addition of the device seen opposite, a geometric shape that framed the word Milo. In this case, Nestlé successfully registered the marks Milo and the Thai equivalent . However, the company faced an uphill battle to register the logo.

Our earlier reports have covered the injunction sought by Nestlé based on trade mark law with the Court of Commerce of St Gaul against the sale of Nespresso-compatible coffee capsules by the Swiss discounter Denner. Another action has been brought forward by Nestlé with the Court of Commerce of Zurich in this regard, but based on two patents from its portfolio for the Nespresso coffee capsule system. The subject matter of the two patents is a coffee extraction method and the capsule containing coffee as a closed package. The Zurich court found no patent infringement for both patents and denied the injunction. For the method patent the court considered that the coffee machines by which the extraction method is performed by the buyers of the machines had been brought on the market with the consent of Nestlé and thus the use of the extraction method was a lawful act performed by the buyers of the machines. Accordingly, the Court found that there can be no contributory infringement of Denner by the sale of coffee capsules to be used in such a lawful use of the machines. This conforms to Swiss law and practice regarding contributory infringement. For the patent on a coffee capsule the Court found that the Denner capsules, which are not fully closed but have holes, do not fall within the scope of the patent since these capsules do not provide optimum conservation and hygiene and a good reproducibility of the extraction. The Court considered that the Denner capsules may lose ground coffee through the holes so that the amount of coffee for the extraction may not be constant for each capsule. The Denner capsules are sold in air-tight sachets but the Court found it had not been made credible that these sachets have the same technical effect as the patented closed capsules.

The Supreme Administrative Court, by virtue of a judgment of January 18 2011 (case II GSK 56/10), dismissed a cassation complaint against a judgment of the District Administrative Court in Warsaw. That case resulted from a complaint filed by Novartis against a decision of the Polish Patent Office on dismissal of an opposition in respect of a trade mark registration in the name of Farmaceutyczna Spoldzielnia Pracy Galena. The judgment is final and valid.

In a show of sympathy to Japanese IP rights holders whose activities may have been disrupted by the calamities which visited Japan starting March 11 2011, the Intellectual Property Office of the Philippines (IPOPHL) issued Office Order 53, series of 2011 entitled Accomodations for Patent and Trademark Applicants, Owners and Agents Affected by the Calamity in Japan, which was published on April 2 2011 and took effect on the same day. Patent filings in the Philippines from Japan are the second largest, after the US, hence the decision of the IPOPHL to be more liberal and promote goodwill.

The protection of a partial industrial design involves the protection of a specific part of a design that is considered novel and applied to a product: automobile components for example, like front or rear combination lamps, or the bumper.

Finally, on March 25 2011, the Indian Patent Office (IPO) released the final version of the Manual of Patent Practice and Procedure (MPPP).