News

An EU court has backed Czech state-owned brewery Budějovický Budvar in its long-running trademark battle with US beer giant Anheuser-Busch. The Luxembourg-based European Court of First Instance threw out an appeal made by Anheuser-Busch against an earlier decision preventing it from registering the Budweiser trademark in the EU saying the Czech brewer already had rights to use the description in Germany and Austria. The two companies have been waging a trademark war over the right to use the “budweiser” name for over 100 years. Anheuser-Busch can still appeal to the EU’s highest court.

The government of Prime Minister Mirek Topolánek has fallen after losing a vote of no-confidence tabled by the opposition Social Democrats. The motion was carried by the bare minimum of 101 votes, when rebel Civic Democrat MPs Vlastimil Tlustý and Jan Schwippel and ex-Greens Věra Jakubková and Olga Zubová cast their votes with the 97 Social Democrat and Communist MPs in the lower house.

Prime Minister Topolánek said on Monday that if the government fell he would expect President Václav Klaus to charge him with forming a new government; if that failed, he would then push for fresh elections in the summer. Mr Topolánek has rejected the idea of a caretaker government. However, much remains unclear about what will follow Tuesday’s dramatic vote.

The fall of the government comes almost exactly halfway through the Czech Republic’s six-month presidency of the European Union. The prime minister told Czech Television he believed the presidency could function effectively, even without a stable government.

The three-party coalition government, made up of Mirek Topolánek’s Civic Democrats, the Christian Democrats and the Greens, was appointed in January 2007.

Police have arrested a 17-year-old in Nový Bydžov, east Bohemia who planned a bomb attack on his school and fellow pupils, the newspaper Deník reported. The youth, who has been remanded in custody since his arrest on Thursday, could face up to five years in jail if found guilty. Class-mates reported that he had behaved oddly and paid a great deal of attention to massacres in schools in other countries. Police are refusing to comment on the case, citing the suspect’s youth.

Fugitive Czech businessman Radovan Krejčíř could be extradited from South Africa for entering the country on a false passport, Hospodařské noviny reported. A spokesperson for the South African state attorney’s office told the newspaper the matter was still being investigated. The South African authorities have previously rejected a Czech government request for the extradition of Mr Krejčíř, who is wanted on charges of large scale fraud and conspiracy to murder.