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There is an indication that North Korea (Democratic People's Republic of Korea) is changing. Recently, North Korea announced the abolition of the "distribution system", its symbol of communism. The abolition symbolizes the recognition of the "privatization of property, " as North Korea became the "last experimental station on earth" relating to the introduction of a market economy.

The US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit's infamous Festo decision has led to countless debates as to how careful one should now be when amending the claims of US patent applications during prosecution before the USPTO. The US Supreme Court, in its judgment rendered in May 2002, has partially softened the harsh impact of the CAFC's original decision, which applied a file wrapper estoppel completely barring the use of the doctrine of equivalents in subsequent infringement proceedings as far as the amended portion of the claim was concerned.

Michael Geist, law professor, University of Ottawa, and director of e-commerce law, Goodmans LLP, Toronto

Law no. 202 on the assurance of the abidance by the intellectual property rights during Customs operations was adopted at the end of 2000 and this was followed by the Methodological Norms for the enforcement of Law no 202/2000 on March 8 2001.

The growing importance of IP rights in Japan has led to frequent amendments to the corpus of Japanese IP laws. Such tweaking has however made it more difficult than ever to gain a grasp on which amendments are applicable to which patents. The following is a quick summary of the major amendments to the Japanese Patent Law made over the last 20 years.

In German court decisions as well as in the German patent literature it has been a generally accepted position that product claims on the one hand and process claims on the other hand represent distinct claim categories; and that product patents (containing only product claims) and process patents (containing only process claims) are distinct patent categories. The applicant is free to choose the appropriate claim category or categories; a patent may contain product claims, process claims or both. However, after grant this choice is binding on the patentee, and a change of category from a product patent to a process patent (and vice versa) is considered to be inadmissible because it involves an extension of the protection conferred (Benkard, Patentgesetz – Gebrauchsmustergesetz, 9th Edition 1993, pages 141, 501, 686 and 710).

Ingrid Hering, London

Anti-counterfeiting agencies have scored some major victories against copyright pirates in the UK. But enforcement remains an uphill struggle, as Ingrid Hering reports

Children mean big business in the world of toys, books and clothes merchandising. Ingrid Hering visited the headquarters of Fox Kids Europe to investigate how its licensing strategy works

The insurance industry has dragged its feet over IP risk management but things are changing rapidly, explains Robert Chase