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The Delhi High Court, in Tata Sons v Greenpeace, recently denied interim injunction to Tata Sons, in an action that sought a permanent injunction and damages amounting to Rs100 million ($2.17 million) against Greenpeace. Tata has initiated an action for infringement of trade mark and defamation and disparagement against Greenpeace. The cause of action for the case arose from a game, modeled around the popular Pac-man game, named Turtle v TATA, that depicts turtles being chased by the Tata logo. The game was intended to raise awareness on the alleged adverse impact of the Dhamra Port Project, a joint venture project between Tata Sons and Larsen and Toubro, on Olive Ridley turtles.

Patent applications may be filed at the German Patent and Trademark Office (GPTO) in a language other than German, provided that a full translation of the foreign language application is filed within three months from the filing date. According to Section 35 of the German Patent Act, the application is deemed not to have been filed if a complete translation is not filed in time.

The General Court of the EU recently found that the Commission infringed the copyright and know-how of Systran machine-translation software. To sanction this behaviour, on December 16, 2010 it ordered the Commission to pay Systran liquidated damages of €12.001 million.

The Raising the Bar initiative at the EPO has – via a number of changes in the Implementing Regulations and EPO Guidelines – attempted to streamline examination. Among other things, the introduction of new EPC Rules 62a, 63 and 70a attempt to introduce elements of examination at the search phase, so that when a patent application reaches the Examining Division, it should be clear what the invention is, what is claimed and what has been searched.

Following the dispute between the Belgian company Engels and the Korean car manufacturer Daewoo for the exclusive right to use a logo composed of the letters DE, light was shed by the Benelux Court of Justice on the question of whether the owner of a lapsed trade mark can preclude a third party from using a confusing sign by invoking provisions on unfair competition (Daewoo Electronics Europe v D Engels).

Since the recent implementation of new software, the Trade Marks Registry in Uganda has insisted that specifications of goods and services be worded exactly in accordance with the class headings as set out in the 9th edition of the International (Nice) Classification. As a result, acceptance notices have been issued requiring that specifications that deviate from the wording used in the Nice Classification be changed - before the application can proceed to advertisement.

The IP survey consists of rankings of the leading firms practising intellectual property in each country, presented in tiers. The total number of firms listed in each jurisdiction varies according to the size of the market. The survey is not an exhaustive list of every firm in each jurisdiction; even firms listed in the lower tiers have been recommended by a number of practitioners and deserve congratulations on their inclusion.

Australia

New Zealand has introduced legislation to provide greater protection to sponsors of important events from ambush marketing: the Major Events Management Act 2007.

Mark Marfé introduces a survey on obtaining evidence of infringement in the UK, Germany, France and the Netherlands, and looks at how US discovery can help a European case