TPT March 2013

Global Marketplace

Nissan (Japanese); and Renault (of France) all did well there in the first 11 months of last year, with sales increases ranging from 11 to 23 per cent. Russia’s automobile industry weathered the financial crisis in part through a willingness to embrace foreign manufacturers even to the peril of homegrown brands. In 2012 the last Volga rolled out of the Gorky automobile factory at Nizhny Novgorod, making space for three foreign manufacturers: General Motors, of the USA and Germany’s Volkswagen and Mercedes.

the well and assign percentages of fault to the companies involved was scheduled to start 25 February in US District Court in New Orleans. › BP had not yet reported for 2012 at press time, but in 2011 the company posted profits of more than $25bn. For Transocean, that year brought a loss of about $5.7bn, attributed in part to the costs of litigation resulting from the sinking of the Deepwater Horizon.

In brief . . . › A uniform patent system has been adopted for Europe. If it goes into effect as expected by early 2014, it would be a step toward a remedy for the country-by-country approach whose time and costs have long been considered an impediment to innovation across the European Union. Meeting in Strasbourg on 11 December, the European Parliament voted 484 to 164 to pass the key plank of the new patent system. Nation-by-nation vetting of the new system was set for February, when governments were expected to sign a treaty creating special patent courts. The new system would supplement the patchwork of EU patent rules. Under the current system, a ruling in one of 27 countries has no automatic validity in any other. According to the European Commission, the executive arm of the EU, that approach has made the protection of inventions and innovations in Europe 15 times more expensive than in the US. A new “unitary” patent granted by the European Patent Office in Munich would no longer need to be validated individually in the EU countries where protection is sought. Nor would it need to be translated into all local languages: English, German or French would suffice. The cost of patent protection should initially drop to around $8,450 from around $46,790, the EC said. › Russia is projected to surpass Germany as the largest car market in Europe in 2014. According to the Association of European Businesses, which tracks sales in an effort to promote trade between Russia and the European Union, Russian sales are now approaching three million cars annually. Russian buyers are snapping up foreign- branded cars. The Solaris from South Korea’s Hyundai was the best-selling vehicle in Russia in 2011. And Hyundai;

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March 2013