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Joel Smith, Andrea Montanari and Simona Cazzaniga provide an update on the complex Italian regime for protecting industrial designs, in the light of new legislation

Car maker Porsche has taken action against no less than 130 Internet domain names using its trade marks in an in rem suit.

Managing intellectual property has always been a headache in Russia. Way back in the USSR at the time of total control of everything, intellectual property along with all other things belonged to the State and the inventor did not have any right to the product of his labour. When the iron curtain fell, the pendulum swung to the other extreme. A rather liberal Patent Law was adopted in 1992. It provided that the inventor or his employer would own and dispose of his work at will. It also gave ample opportunities to the applicant to patent his inventions abroad and sell them if he chose to do so. There were no restrictions on where or what to patent which could jeopardize the security of the State. True, the Law contained provisions to the effect that there would be a special law on secret inventions. Unfortunately, that law has not seen light and there are not even signs of it ever being discussed at any forum.

South Africa has acceded to the Patent Cooperation Treaty. The accession procedure was completed on March 16 1999 with the result that an applicant for an international patent application (PCT) can now designate South Africa (ZA) as one of the countries in which the international patent application will be validated. Accordingly, it is no longer necessary for an applicant for an international patent application to file a separate national patent application in South Africa (in addition to the international patent application) in order to extend patent rights to the territory of South Africa. Instead, such an applicant can now cover South Africa merely by ticking an appropriate box on the application papers at the time of filing the international patent application.

The problem of whether a claimed invention in relation to a selection invention is patentable may arise not only in the chemical, but also in many other fields.

Music copyright and the Internet

Exhaustion of rights, as an exception to the rights afforded by IP laws, has been recognized in the laws of many countries in the world. In general terms, it implies that the owner of intellectual property rights cannot oppose the further trading of products embodying its rights, if and to the extent that such products have been marketed by or with its consent. Exhaustion of rights marks the border between intellectual property rights and those of the buyer of a product or copy embodying the IP rights.

In a recent decision, the Supreme Court has tightened patent filing rules to encourage early filings.

The Court of First Instance of Madrid has rendered the first Spanish judgment concerning the so-called Year 2000 chaos (Y2K), that is to say, the chaos derived from the fact that most computing systems are unable to differentiate the year 2000 from the year 1900, as they read only the last two numbers.

Why is it that so many Community Trade Mark applications are being filed in the Dutch language? Are Dutch enterprises more aware of the need for trade mark protection than companies in other countries? A closer look to the nationality of the applicants of those Dutch trade marks, however, reveals that many of them have no connection whatsoever with the Netherlands. Why then is the Dutch language so popular as a filing language?