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By means of Act 50/1998, dated December 30, on Tax, Administrative and Social Measures, which develops and executes General State Budgets for 1999, the Spanish Government has amended both Act 11/1986, dated March 20, on patents and utility models and Act 32/1988, dated November 10, which deals with trade marks. The object of these amendments is, first of all, to establish time limits for procedures filed before the Spanish Trade Marks and Patents Office. Secondly, a new Article 87 is added to Act 32/1988, on trade marks. This article establishes the national rules concerning the transformation in a national trade mark of an international trade mark registered in Spain by virtue of the Madrid Protocol, and which has been cancelled by virtue of Article 6.4 of the Protocol.

On July 23 1998 the Trade Mark Law No. 84/1998 came into force. Section 88 of this Law provides that if a trade mark is infringed, the owner may ask, by way of interlocutory injunction, for the immediate cessation of any infringement until the main trial case is settled and the decision is final.

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.

An intellectual property owner faces difficulties when trying to recover full damage compensation from an infringer in Korea due to three main reasons:

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.

Patent Ordinance

Sending rockets into space is not NASA’s only role, Robert Norwood, director of its commercial programmes division, tells Ralph Cunningham.

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

Following its judgment in the Hermes case, the European Court of Justice (ECJ) is again being requested to pass judgment on the Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS). In the Hermes case (case C-63/96), the ECJ had to judge whether the term provisional measures, as used in Article 50, Paragraph 6 of the TRIPS Agreement, also applies to Dutch interim injunction proceedings. Article 50, Paragraph 6 stipulates that a provisional measure must be followed by proceedings leading to a decision on the merits of the case, and the Dutch court had asked the European Court for a ruling as to whether Dutch interim injunction proceedings (kort geding) could be regarded as a provisional measure. The European Court affirmed that such was the case.

There are signs that Virginia’s eastern district, known since 1990 as the rocket docket, has taken on more than it can chew.