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A Chinese company "Wedo Tools Co" trading in hand tools established dealership relations with a Russian company which became its exclusive distributor in Russia. The parties concluded a distributorship agreement after which the Russian company registered its company name as "Wedo Rus." The parties also concluded another agreement according to which the designation "Wedo" should be registered in Russia as a trademark in the name of the Chinese company.

On May 20 2020, the Korean Patent Act (KPA) was amended such that mixed damages of lost profits and a reasonable royalty for patent infringement may be claimed by a patentee and awarded by the court. The amendment will apply to damages filed for on or after December 10 2020.

With many employees in Thailand working outside their company's normal IT security fence, their increased use of their own computers and devices instead of those in their offices with standard or enhanced security mechanisms has made it more challenging for employers to control access to key business information. In the rush to set up a fully or partially remote workforce, most companies have had little time to establish work-from-home guidelines on protection of their valuable intangible assets like trade secrets and confidential business information. The need for sufficient internal guidelines on copying files to USB drives, emailing files to personal accounts, and uploading to cloud storage is already widely recognised, but who could have imagined the need for rules precluding sharing proprietary information over Zoom, Skype, Webex, and such programs?

An IP court has accepted the discovery of evidence demand made by an originator company against a generic pharmaceutical company after the court's expert panel confirmed that patent infringement had occurred, but has then rejected the originator's request for a preliminary injunction due to the so-called Bolar exemption.

Are importers and distributors responsible for patent infringement related to the products they import and distribute? This seemingly simple question has still only been partially answered in Vietnam, when the Superior People's Court of Ho Chi Minh City rendered a judgment on July 28 2020 sending a case back to the first-instance court for a retrial.

Quan Kang of Deqi details the examination standards for subject matter, inventiveness and sufficient disclosure in the arena of AI-related inventions and makes some suggestions for drafting claims and specifications

Shimpei Kuroda of Shiga analyses data on applications for AI inventions, examining AI’s use in fields as various as traffic control and medical diagnosis

Hyun-Sil Lee and Minji Ryan Kim of FirstLaw analyse changes to South Korean IP legislation and examine KIPO’s plan to introduce K-discovery

The e-commerce market in China is one of the fastest growing in the world. To improve regulation over the flourishing market and maintain the market order, China promulgated the E-Commerce Law which became effective on January 1 2019. Notably, the E-Commerce Law addresses intellectual property protection in e-commerce settings. To reflect further developments regarding e-commerce in China, and to implement intellectual property protection more efficiently, on June 10 2020, the Supreme People’s Court of China (SPC) released Draft Guiding Opinion on the Adjudication of Intellectual Property Disputes Involving E-commerce Platforms 《关于审理涉电子商务平台知识产权纠纷案件的指导意见》 (Guiding Opinion) for public consultation.

In the third article from an exclusive series on the automotive industry, Cyril Abrol and Dhruv Goel of Remfry & Sagar discuss data privacy in India

It is not uncommon to hear that design protection is often underestimated or even forgotten compared to other forms of IP, like trademarks, patents, and copyright. In Brazil, that seems to be the case when you compare the average of 6,000+ design applications filed annually, with the 245,000+ trademarks and 28,000+ patents filings.

Despite the widespread social, health, and economic devastation caused by COVID-19, it has largely been business as usual at the Indonesian IP Office (DGIP) since the start of the pandemic. While there certainly have been some minor disruptions and corresponding adjustments, overall the impact so far appears to have been minimal.