Australian Trademarks Lawyer & Attorneys : Nicholas Weston Law Firm : Copyrights, Intellectual Property

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Australia has concluded negotiations for the region-wide ASEAN-Australia-New Zealand Free Trade Agreement (AANZFTA). The agreement marks a significant step towards the lifting of ASEAN trade barriers on Australian products and services, and the possible establishment of a regional trade marks filing system.

According to the Minister for Trade, the AANZFTA covers16 per cent of Australia's trade in goods and services, two-way trade worth $71 billion and a market of 570 million people with a combined GDP of US$1 trillion. AANZFTA is Australia’s first multi-country (plurilateral) FTA.

The final negotiations were concluded in Singapore on 28 August 2008 conducted by Ministers of the 10 ASEAN countries, Australia and New Zealand. The agreement became public when the Ministers were photographed trying to give the secret handshake at a press conference. The signing of the AANZFTA is scheduled for December this year.

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Brisbane based, publicly listed bio-tech, Agenix Limited (Agenix) [ASX: AGX, NASDAQ OTC: AGXLY] has appointed Nick Weston of Melbourne based law firm Nicholas Weston to its board of directors as Chairman. The ASX press release is available HERE.

Agenix was listed on the Australian Stock Exchange in October 1987 and has infrastructure in Brisbane, Singapore, Shanghai and the United States of America. Through its subsidiaries, Agen Biomedical and Agenix Biopharmaceutical (Shanghai), the company has a strategic goal of building and developing a pipeline of therapeutic and imaging products.

Agenix wholly foreign owned enterprise (WFOE), Agenix Biopharmaceutical (Shanghai) is presently resolving issues in relation to the April 2007 purchase of the businesses of two associated Chinese life sciences companies. One, Shanghai Rui Guang Bio-Pharma Development Co., Ltd, is a biopharmaceutical company which has a pipeline of anti-viral drugs in development. Its lead product candidate, a hepatitis B virus drug, has successfully completed Phase III clinical trials in China and received China State Food and Drug Administration new drug approval on 30 September 2007. Sales of You He Ding in China are estimated to grow to in excess of RMB320 million per annum. The company has a deep pipeline of potential anti-viral drugs in development. The second, Shanghai Yi Sheng Yuan Pharmaceutical Co., Ltd, has a GMP certified manufacturing facility which has the capacity to produce 150 million tablets per annum (based on a 5-day working week at 8 hours per day).

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In Neumann v Sons of the Desert SL [2008] FCA 1183 (11 August 2008), the applicant invoked the Federal Court’s jurisdiction to hear and determine appeals against decisions, directions or orders of the Registrar of Trade Marks pursuant to s 191 of the Trade Marks Act 1995 (Cth ) (Act). The Honourable Ryan J pointed out:

“Although referred to as an "appeal", this proceeding is by way of an application for the exercise of the Court’s original jurisdiction and is conducted as a rehearing. There is no presumption of the correctness of the Registrar’s decision but due weight is to be given to his opinion as that of a person expert in the evaluation of the relevant facts and the application to those facts of the principles which can be derived from the Act.”

Ryan J held that the applicant before the court and the applicant for the trade marks were joint owners and, therefore the Delegate’s decision should be over-turned for any one of the following three reasons:

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A recent Trade Marks Office decision that suspended three pending opposition proceedings in relation to trade mark applications made by Cadbury UK Limited for certain shades of purple has been overturned by the Federal Court.   A copy of this appeal decision can be read here(Cadbury UK Ltd v Registrar of Trade Marks [2008] FCA 1126 (1 August 2008).

Readers may recall that the decision of the Registrar’s delegate to put opposition proceedings on hold was reported by the Australian Trade Marks Law Blog in February.  Newcomers may want to refer to this article for a brief summary of events in the ongoing chocolate battle between Darrell Lea and Cadbury Schweppes.