Historically this 'global overview' of the annual developments in trademark law has tended to focus on the movement toward increased harmonisation between countries, or groups of countries, in terms of bringing laws, regulations and procedures more in line with existing systems employed by the more advanced (read: 'older') trademark protection and enforcement regimes. The result has typically been a more or less predictable recitation of those countries which seemed to be 'coming up to speed' and those which lagged behind, in some cases woefully so.