Much has been made about London's place as the so-called ‘divorce capital of the world' as a result of its seemingly generous approach to financial claims by less wealthy spouses against their high-earning or otherwise wealthy husbands or wives.

The Family Division of the High Court has continued in its efforts to disregard a company's separate legal personality in order to bolster the matrimonial pot...

The European Court of Justice ("ECJ") has recently looked at three cases concerning applications for registration of potentially descriptive and/or non-distinctive marks. The <U>Doublemint</U> approach was adopted and the ECJ confirmed that these marks were incapable of registration. This is the case even where two or more non-distinctive words are amalgamated to form a new word, or where there are synonyms available which can be used to indicate the same characteristics of a product.

LLP members who have in place HMRC protections in relation to their accumulated pension funds will need careful management to avoid breaching their protections.

The claimant, General Electric, acquired a patent in May 2002 involving variable speed wind generators used in electricity generation. The patent had been granted back in 1998. Following the acquisition of the patent by GE, opposition proceedings were commenced in the European Patent Office ("EPO") by several opponents (one of whom was Enercon, one of the defendants in this action). The opponents were attacking the validity of the patent based on prior art citations.

Applications for shape trade marks are becoming very common, in particular for goods like drinks and liquid detergents which have to be packaged.

In a disappointing judgment for Reed Solutions Plc, the Court of Appeal this month considered the use of metatags and internet search engine keywords in the context of trade mark infringement. It also provided guidance on the own name defence and identicality of marks and services and re-visited the application of the user principle in relation to damages for trade mark infringement and passing off.

Patentees cannot use the claims of their patents against alleged infringers as merely guidelines in order to gain wider protection of their invention. This recent decision brings more certainty for third parties, at a cost to patentees.

The draft EU Directive on "Measures and Procedures to Ensure the Enforcement of Intellectual Property Rights" is now expected to be adopted, in its current form, in April 2004 and implemented by Member States in 2006. The Directive applies to all IP infringement disputes. Sounds familiar - haven’t I heard about this before?

There have been a number of cases this year considering how, and in what circumstances the assets of a company owned by one spouse may be recovered for transfer to the other spouse in the context of ancillary relief proceedings.

Intensive coverage of the Hutton Inquiry has highlighted once again just how much trouble an anonymous source can make, not only for the employer he sneaks on but also for the journalist who laps it up and publicises it. What can the employer do to find out where the leak is coming from, and how can the media defend themselves?

EU Directive 2001/29/EC on the harmonisation of certain aspects of copyright came into force in June 2001 and should have been implemented by all member states by 22nd December 2002. Only two member states met that deadline.