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Amidst political turmoil sweeping across the country and stiff negotiations with the IMF the former Russian Government did not leave without attention attention to the problems of intellectual property. It was aware of the necessity to keep a more attentive eye on those issues. Several weeks ago it issued a Decree No 413. The Decree concerns copyright and neighbouring rights.

The Romanian Law no 84/1998 on Trade Marks and Geographical Indications introduces major changes in the conditions of extinction of trade marks rights.

Increasingly, the decisions of the US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit reflect the need for patent applicants, particularly non US-based applicants, to be assisted by a lawyer who is a skilled linguist. This is a natural outgrowth of the now-established principle that patent claim interpretation is a matter of law to be determined independently by the courts at each level of the litigation process (Cybor v FAS Technologies, 138 F 3d 1448 (Fed Cir 1998 en banc); Markman v Westview Instruments, 52 F 3d 967 (Fed Cir 1995 en banc); affirmed 517 US 370 (1996).

In 1974, the office of the United States Trade Representative was mandated to identify and pursue countries which did not offer adequate protection to US right owners.

In Mexico when someone seeks protection for a title of a periodical publication, a Mexican intellectual property counsel should recommend obtaining copyright as well as trade mark protection as trade mark protection only will not suffice. The Mexican Copyright Law recognizes sui generis protection for titles of publications including magazines, heads of newspapers, newspapers, pamphlets, supplements and guides. The Law also recognizes other types of titles of publications, however for the purposes of this brief they need not be included.

It is now seven years since the Council of the European Communities adopted Regulation (EEC) No 1768/92 concerning the creation of a supplementary protection certificate for medicinal products, which entered into force on January 2 1993. This Regulation was intended to compensate the patent proprietor for the fact that, because of the long time taken by state marketing authorization procedures for medicinal products, the period of effective protection under the remaining term of the patent after such authorization has been obtained has been reduced considerably. The supplementary protection certificate (SPC) is a property right in its own right, which is granted separately for each member state of the EEC. It does not lead to a general extension of the term of a patent, and the question of the subject matter and extent of protection conferred by SPCs is consequently of decisive importance. Among specialists, this issue is the subject of highly charged debate, and the practice with regard to granting in the various member states also shows that, in some cases, very different standards are applied, with the consequence that, in the United Kingdom for example, certificates can be granted for active agents in a medicinal product in the form of their bases or salts thereof, whereas in Germany the Federal Patent Court (BPatG) has hitherto taken the line that the subject matter of an SPC can only be for the active agent shown in the marketing authorization. In the opinion of the BPatG, only the courts hearing infringement cases are entitled to determine the extent of protection conferred by an SPC, not the German Patent and Trade Mark Office.

In Australian pre-grant patent opposition proceedings, grounds available to the opponent include lack of inventive step. Lack of inventive step is established if it is shown that the invention claimed would have been obvious to a non-inventive skilled worker, equipped with the common general knowledge (CGK) in the field of the invention in Australia at the priority date of the application. CGK is that which is part of the ordinary equipment of all persons engaged in the relevant art. The nature of the CGK must be established by evidence. An appropriate deponent for this purpose is clearly a non-inventive skilled worker in the field of the invention.

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