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To compensate patent owners for the time it takes to obtain regulatory and marketing approval for new drugs, the Australian Patents Act provides for patent term extensions of up to five years. However, in order to have an extension of term granted, a number of requirements need to be satisfied. One of these requirements is that a patent discloses and claims a pharmaceutical substance per se or a pharmaceutical substance produced by a process that involves the use of recombinant DNA technology.

Since industrial property rights in general constitute essential elements in the operation of modern business, their study habitually forms part of the commercial law. Thus, in the Argentine Republic, trade mark and patent laws are complementary to the Commercial Code that is in force.

According to Austrian law, reasons for trade mark invalidity, such as bad faith, can be raised as defences in an infringement action. Such defences have to be decided as preliminary questions.

Interim measures and preliminary injunctions are frequently used in Belgian and European (cross-border) patent litigation conflicts. Belgian courts can generally order such measures upon a prima facie assessment of the validity of the claimant's IP rights, which includes neither a full legal analysis nor a substantial technical examination.

On January 6 Alibaba announced a revamp of its TaoProtect online policing system which applies to its online sales portals www.taobao.com and www.tmall.com. Both are Chinese-language trade platforms, the prior ostensibly C2C and the latter B2C.

The French government recently announced that together with the Caisse des Dépôts et Consignations (CDC) it will create a new sovereign patent fund (SPF) called Fonds Souverain de la Propriété Intellectuelle (FSPI).

The Patent Law Modernisation Act (Patentrechtsmodernisierungsgesetz) introduced a legal basis for rejecting late-filed submissions during German nullity proceedings by the revised Section 83 paragraph 4 (§ 83 Abs 4) of the German Patent Act (Patentgesetz). A late-filed submission may be rejected if its consideration results in the adjournment of an already scheduled oral hearing. However, the party filing the late submission may overcome an impending rejection if an adequate reasoning can be provided for the lateness of the submission.

2014 was a mixed year for design decisions from the Court of Justice and General Court in Luxembourg. David Stone explains how, while the Court of Justice may have scored highly with two decisions, the General Court has some way to go in its interpretation of the EU-wide legislation

Michael Carter, Nick Smee, Luke Kempton and Nick Cunningham analyse the implications of the Unitary Patent proposals for non-contentious matters, and recommend steps that patent owners and licensees should take now

It was a good idea to buy indulgence for sins committed in the Middle Ages. As time went on, humankind dropped the idea of buying expiation for money. However the idea survived through the ages and found a new expression in the market economy. The idea lacks inventive level or novelty but some people all the same are lured into believing that there may be something in it. It is like a Ponzi scheme: people plunge into the adventure, come out befooled, some time passes and other people believe they will have a better luck.