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The Decree on Amendments to Trademark Law in force as of August 10 2018 introduced new legal concepts to the IP Law to update and reinforce the intellectual property system in Mexico.

Until 2017, it was clear from several decisions of the Austrian Supreme Court that trade marks registered in bad faith were invalid and therefore could be successfully attacked any time and that asserted rights based on them would be rejected as immoral. However, the decisions went further: the mere use of that sign was held to be inadmissible and therefore could be forbidden as such without any other reason.

In Brazil, the courts, rather than the Brazilian Patent and Trademark Office (BPTO), have the final say about the registration or cancellation of a patent, design or trade mark.

The name of the castle of Ludwig II of Bavaria, Neuschwanstein, was filed as a European trade mark by the Free State of Bavaria in many classes of goods and services (3, 8, 14-16, 18, 21, 25, 28, 30, 32-6, 38 and 44). As its validity was contested, the question arose as to whether such a name was descriptive of the geographical origin of the goods and services claimed in the application.

Mexico is a nation made up of diverse cultures supported by its indigenous people. The population that is considered indigenous represents 21.5% of the total population of the country.

When inventions/designs are disclosed to the public by one of the inventors/designers or applicants, a one year grace period is available in Korea for patent, utility model, and design applications.

In 2015, the Korean Supreme Court cleared the patent eligibility hurdle for dosage regimen inventions, and announced that dosage regimens are patentable if they satisfy other patentability requirements including novelty and inventiveness (Supreme Court en banc decision 2014Hu768, May 21 2015). In the first case where the inventiveness of a dosage invention was at issue (Patent Court decision 2015Heo7889, February 3 2017), the Korean Patent Court denied inventiveness on the ground that optimising dosage regimens to achieve the reduction of toxicity or improvement of efficacy is considered routine experimentation or work of a person having ordinary skill in the art (PHOSITA). This shows that Korea has a strict standard for the inventiveness of dosage regimen patents.

Jurisprudence has had fixed rules for a long time on the reconditioning of pharmaceutical products by parallel importers, without the consent of the trade mark owner.

Early this year, the Mexican Institute of Industrial Property issued decisions denying registration for the trade mark PINCHE GRINGO BBQ & Design in classes 43 (restaurants) and 30 (sauces). The grounds of denial were a supposed violation of Article 4 of Mexican IP Law, which states that no patents, registrations or authorisations are to be granted for any legal figures or institutions regulated by this law, when the contents of an application are contrary to public order, morals and good customs.

Ten years ago the Austrian Supreme Court decided a case concerning Mazda and a tuning company. The tuning company had offered its chip tuning parts for a range of cars. It also named on its website the car types for which it offered these chips. For that it used the cars' word marks and the figurative marks (logos).

A French court issued a ruling on April 13 2018 concerning the photographs of Chambord Castle used by Kronenbourg breweries in the context of an advertising campaign for one of their beers.

Many food products contain known ingredients, rather than novel ingredients, as essential components. Such food products are usually a result of combining components in a special ratio to achieve a particular flavour, taste, effect, etc.