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Howard Coble is a congressman in the United States House of Representatives and has been chairman of the Subcommittee on Courts, the Internet and Intellectual Property since 1994. He is a Republican and represents North Carolina. Blaine Merritt has been chief counsel of the subcommittee since February 2000.

New plant variety protection legislation favours breeders over farmers, say protestors. Irrespective of the arguments, the first-to-file rule means you must to move quickly to secure your rights, argue Chris Lim and Rommel Casis

In the first case of its type since the new Patent Act, a patent has been struck out on the basis of a premature sale. Adrian Zahl examines the implications of the decision for patentees in Canada

On June 20 2002 the Polish Parliament approved revisions to the Industrial Property Law. The revisions came into effect on August 4 2002. Information about the revisions was published on July 20 2002 in the Official Law Gazette No 113 item 983.

On May 22 this year, the US Supreme Court decided the most eagerly-awaited patent case in many years, Festo v SMC. The case addresses a key issue for patent holders: what protection is available under the doctrine of equivalents. But was the decision as important as many people have claimed? What effect will it have for patent applicants and litigants in the US? And what impact will it have on the US Patent and Trademark Office, the Federal Circuit and district courts? MIP invited six senior IP practitioners in the US to a round table discussion, held at the Washington DC offices of Finnegan Henderson, to discuss the implications of the Festo decision, as well as other recent patent cases. James Nurton moderated the discussion

Australia: Almost 40% of Australian businesses are using pirated software, according to a Dimension Data Australia survey reported in The Australian newspaper, with IT managers blaming the problem on complex licensing programmes and a lack of internal monitoring. China: Sina.com, said to be China's leading internet content provider, has been ordered to pay Qian Kun, a writer, Rmb2,000 ($240) for publishing work Qian had done exclusively for Sohu.com, Sina's biggest rival, according to China Daily. Beijing No 1 Intermediate Court also ordered Sina.com to carry apologies to the writer on its sports channel for seven days. China: In what is thought to be an unprecedented move, authorities will allow US prosecutors to come to Beijing to question witnesses about the theft of Lucent Technologies software. The US lawyers are coming to the Chinese capital to interview staff from Datang Telecom Technology. In June 2001, three Chinese citizens, two of whom worked at Lucent's headquarters in New Jersey, were charged with stealing trade secrets from Lucent with the intent of using Datang to market a product based on the secrets. China: The Supreme People's Court has ruled that a trade mark owner can be prosecuted in a product liability action. The Beijing Municipal Higher People's Court asked the higher court to rule on the issue after it came up in a case concerning General Motors, the US car company, and two of its subsidiaries. The ruling came into force on July 28. Japan: The Office for Promotion of Justice System Reform is to study a proposal to exclude the public from court hearings on patents and other IP rights to prevent important business secrets from being revealed, according to Kyodo News Service. Japan: Sony has developed Open MG X, a new digital copyright management and distribution technology, which it says will stop the unauthorized copying of entertainment files, such as music and films, that are distributed over the internet and also enable content distributors to set hours and number of times for replaying such files. Thailand: The Business Software Alliance (BSA) has made its first raid in Thailand on a website it believes was selling pirated software, music, movies and pornography. The Economic Crime Investigations Division of the Thai Police carried out the raid on SmileThailand.com with the help of BSA investigators. The operator of the website was said to be selling CDs for Bt150 ($3.57).

A controversial patent granted to Edinburgh University has been curtailed to exclude human or animal embryonic stem cells.

Taiwan's Executive Yuan, or Cabinet, is beginning to act on promises it made in April to help the copyright industries tackle infringement.

A survey of patent cases heard in the English High Court has indicated that only eight out of 23 reported cases last year were decided in favour of the patentee.

Another celebrated name has disappeared from the US IP community with the closure on August 31 of the 101-year-old boutique Lyon & Lyon.