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Lipitor sales in Australia exceeded A$550m in the financial year 2005/06. The ongoing global patent litigation over this blockbuster cholesterol-lowering drug has resulted in an important development in Australian patent jurisprudence.

A new system linking the health and patent authorities makes it possible to challenge pharmaceutical marketing authorizations. Alejandro Luna and Juan Luis Serrano of Olivares & Cía share their experiences with the new system

Generic drug makers have been given more room to move in Australia's changing legal landscape. Patrick Dwyer and Jacinta Flattery-O'Brien of Shelston IP provide a tour

The US has, until now, been the preferred habitat of the patent troll. But assertive licensing companies are becoming increasingly aware of how they can use Europe's fragmented system of patent rules to their negotiating advantage, explain William Cook and Dafydd Bevan

The US Supreme Court decision in MedImmune gave licensees the right to challenge a licensed patent while continuing to pay royalties. But those patent owners that are responding to the new challenge by redrafting their licences must pay close attention to EU competition rules, say Sangeeta Puran and David Fyfield

A monthly column devoted to IP curiosities and controversies, named in honour of John of Utynam – who received the world's first recorded patent in 1449

The European Commission has finally published its blueprint for an EU-wide patent strategy

A company at the heart of the controversy over compulsory licensing for pharmaceuticals in Thailand is to reduce the price it charges for one of its key drugs

With the growth of the biotech industry and the maturing of the first breakthrough inventions, litigation over patents is becoming more frequent and spreading around the world. MIP has selected five important cases from the US, Australia, France and Germany that highlight some of the issues that have arisen in the past year. Emma Barraclough, James Nurton and Peter Ollier look at how the cases developed, and why they are significant for the industry

In my briefing last month, I explained that US patent litigation is governed by the American Rule pursuant to which the prevailing party is not automatically allowed to recover its attorney fees. Rule 54(d) of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, however, states that "costs other than attorneys fees shall be allowed as of course to the prevailing party unless the court otherwise directs". The US Supreme Court has explained that Rule 54 does not provide "unrestrained discretion to tax costs to reimburse a winning litigant for every expense he has seen fit to incur in the conduct of his case" (Farmer v Arbian Am Oil Co, 379 US 227, 235 (1964)). Rather, federal courts are bound by 28 USC Section 1920, which expressly lists the kinds of expenses that a federal court may tax as costs, and the courts have stated that Section 1920 thereby imposes "rigid controls" on cost-shifting in federal courts ((Crawford Fitting Co v J T Gibbons, Inc, 482 US 437, 444 (1987)).