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In a major decision handed down in June this year, India’s Supreme Court found that a party seeking to revoke a patent must choose a single path of attack. By Peter Leung

A dispute over security fencing led to a landmark decision on Google’s AdWords programme. James Nurton reports

The Fourth Plenum of the 18th Central Committee of the Communist Party of China (CPC) was held in Beijing from October 20 to 23 2014. The CPC Central Committee commonly holds seven plenary sessions during its five-year terms and each plenary session has a particular policy focus. Generally, a fourth plenary session focuses on CPC self-governance and self-development. A key outcome of the Plenum, as detailed in the resolution, is to come up with an instructive roadmap towards the Chinese Socialistic rule of law and promises of ambitious and sweeping judiciary reforms. The rule of law focus in this 4th Plenum is widely held as an unprecedented exercise in CPC's history.

On October 14 2014, the Supreme People's Court (SPC) issued the SPC Provisions on Certain Issues Related to Trials of Administrative Cases Involving the Grant and Confirmation of Trade Mark Rights (Draft), intended to provide guidance to courts (and indirectly the Trade Mark Office (TMO) and Trade Mark Review and Adjudication Board (TRAB)), in handling administrative appeals involving trade mark application refusals, oppositions, cancellations and invalidations. The bulk of the Draft Provisions focus on bad faith trade mark registration.

After an extensive process of consultation, the Indian Patent Office recently finalised guidelines for examination of patent applications claiming pharmaceutical inventions. These industry specific guidelines are part of an effort by the Patent Office to lend more clarity to patenting norms in different technology sectors. Traditionally, the Patent Office has only issued a draft manual every few years, which collates latest judicial precedents. However with the changing nature of patenting in India, the Patent Office has embarked on this new practice of industry-specific guidelines. Like the Manual, these guidelines are not binding on examiners since they lack the force of law. Thus in case of a conflict between the Patents Act and the guidelines, the former will prevail.

After the new Copyrights Law enacted in September this year, the Indonesian government plans to be more active in preparing the draft of new Trade Mark Law.

On August 4 2014, the Intellectual Property Office of Singapore (IPOS) introduced a performance pledge for Intellectual Property registration. Under this new pledge, a grant of a Singapore patent application may be obtained within 12 months from the date of filing the application if certain requirements are met. A Singapore design application may be obtained within four months from the date of filing if there are no objections. A Singapore trade mark registration may be obtained within nine months from the date of filing if there are no objections or oppositions to the application.

On October 7 2014, the Office of the Director General (ODG) of the Intellectual Property Office of the Philippines dismissed the appeal of La Chemise Lacoste to the decision of the Bureau of Legal Affairs (BLA) which rejected the opposition to trade mark application 4-1996-116672 filed on December 27 1996, by Crocodile International for the mark Crocodile and device (appeal number 14-2013-0042). The contested marks are shown in the pictures.

The Patent Trial and Appeal Board was recently faced with a set of cases where the patent owner assigned its patents to a third party during the pendency of inter partes review (IPR) proceedings. The Board's comments suggest that the new assignee would not be permitted to replace the named patent owner as a participant in the IPR (Librestream Techs, Inc v Wireless Remote Sys LLC, IPR2014-00368 (Paper 15) and IPR2014-00369 (Paper 16) (October 10 2014)).

Last August, the Benelux Office for Intellectual Property (BOIP) rendered a decision in Benelux opposition proceedings in which it ruled that the opponent could not rely on the mark it invoked, as the same mark had been subject to a refusal on absolute grounds.