Just got of the phone with our Adwords account manager and here is the email to summarise:

"As of 5th May, we will allow open keyword bidding on all terms in the UK and Ireland only. This means, that as of next month, it will be possible for more than one advertiser to appear in the sponsored links after a user has typed in a search query using a trademarked term."

In the past this has been allowed until the trademark owner flagged it up with Google for their trademark to be monitored (a lengthy process to get enforced) now the UK & Ireland are falling into line with the US and Canada where trademark bidding is fair game. However the original rules still apply for ad copy i.e. you cannot display trademark terms in your ad copy.