Recent amendments to the Trademark Act and the Design Protection Act have added support for treble damages in certain infringement scenarios. These amendments follow similar changes to the Patent Act and the Unfair Competition Prevention and Trade Secret Protection Act relating to wilful patent infringement and trade secret misappropriation which came into effect in July 2019. This article examines the amendments in detail.
Continuing the trend of relaxed requirements for design applications, the Enforcement Rules of the Design Protection Act have been further eased in several aspects. This article explains the changes which affect mixed drawing formats, font designs in the TrueType font format and further categories of design which will be eligible for partial examination from 1 December 2020.