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On April 1 1999, the Communications and Multimedia Act 1998 (the Act) came into force in Malaysia. The objectives are to promote national policies for the communications and multimedia industries, not least of which is to establish Malaysia as a major global centre for communications and multimedia information and content services; to establish a supporting licensing and regulatory framework, and to regulate the Communications and Multimedia Commission. Interestingly, the Act expressly denies any attempt to censor the Internet.

The Japan Supreme Court handed down the first decision concerning standards to be used in recognizing the gist of a claimed invention in the landmark March 1991 case involving the Japanese Patent Office (JPO) and the German company Boehringer-Mannheim.

Generic companies around the world are enjoying extended rights to test drugs pre-patent expiry

Under Australian law "a complete specification must describe the invention fully, including the best method known to the applicant of performing the invention" . Case law states that "....the objection of insufficiency is concerned only with enabling addressees amongst the public, on the expiration of the patentee´ s monopoly, to successfully use the specification for their own purposes.

The German Federal Supreme Court recently issued a decision on colour marks (Farbmarke gelb/schwarz, December 10 1998), which has ended a controversy in Germany. According to this decision, non-contoured definite colours or compositions of colours are registrable as trade marks.

Comparative advertising in Mexico is mainly regulated by the Federal Law on Consumer Protection (FLCP) and the Mexican Industrial Property Law (IPL). The FLCP protects consumers against deceptive and abusive advertisements. Article 32 establishes that the information or advertisement with respect to goods or services which is made known by any means, must be truthful, liable to be verified and exempt of texts, dialogues, sounds, images or any other descriptions which induce or may induce to error or confusion due to an inaccuracy of said texts. Since this provision deals with advertising in general, it is applicable to a case of comparative advertising when that is false.

The Internet has been created and has developed without specific regulations and its creators maintain that its absolute anarchy is an essential condition for its existence. In the absence of regulations, the Internet is regarded as a conquest territory and it frequently happens that the entrepreneurs find out that their trade marks have been registered as domain names by third parties, competitors and non-competitors.

Moves, Deals, Developments

On January 26 this year, the public prosecutor of the City of Örebro, Sweden, Göran Edlund, ordered a search of a storeroom in an abandoned shoe-factory, in order to find evidence of tax evasion. No documents proving tax evasion were found during the search. Instead, the police found approximately 100,000 tee-shirts and sweatshirts printed with a variety of famous trade marks and brands. The garments were probably intended for sale at fairs and markets in Sweden during the coming summer.

Franchising is one of the most effective means of exploiting intellectual property. As in any exploitation of intellectual property, an infrastructure that enables successful protection and enforcement of intellectual property rights is crucial. Singapore and Malaysia both afford a strong intellectual property regime and are ideal for franchises to thrive. However, the franchising concept involves more than just protection of intellectual property rights. There are other important issues that must be considered, in particular, an environment that nurtures the franchise industry and the relationship between franchisor, franchisee and third parties. Singapore, or more specifically, the Singapore Trade Development Board (TDB), is focusing on nurturing the franchise industry in Singapore. It hopes to achieve at least 200 home-grown franchises and 165 foreign franchises by the year 2005. The blueprint includes the following new initiatives: