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Are you ready for the fundamental changes coming to trade mark law and practice in Europe? Over the next four pages, we provide pointers for steps you need to consider – and when. By James Nurton

Medical device maker Greatbatch has been awarded $37.5 million by a jury in the District of Delaware for AVX infringing its pacemaker and defibrillator patents, in the largest jury award so far this year in a US patent case

The TTAB’s 2015 precedential opinions, the Federal Circuit taking on a case challenging the Eastern District of Texas’s patent case dominance, Apple's grant of an injunction, the Supreme Court being asked to hear a Batmobile copyright case, and a trade mark fight involving Marilyn Monroe were in the IP headlines this week

The debate over the patentability of isolated DNA has raged around the world. Tania Obranovich compares the two Myriad decisions from the highest courts in Australia and the US and explains how the Australian decision has called into question what had long been thought of as a fundamental pillar of Australian patent law

Genentech, the plaintiff, owns a patent for an invention titled "vascular endothelial cell growth factor antagonists". Genentech filed an application for the registration of patent term extension in relation to the patent asserting that Genentech obtained an approval of partial changes in manufacturing approval (the disposition), which added a new dosage and administration for its medicine Avastin, whose general name is bevacizumab (the medicine). Regarding the medicine, there was a prior disposition that differs only in dosage and administration.

In 2015, the US Supreme Court issued a decision in B&B Hardware, Inc v Hargis Industries, Inc which held that a court should give preclusive effect to decisions made by the US Patent and Trademark Office's Trademark Trial and Appeal Board (TTAB) if the ordinary elements of issue preclusion are met. Although the particular issue which was addressed in the B&B Hardware case was whether a TTAB decision should have a preclusive effect in the context of a likelihood of confusion analysis, a recent district court decision indicates that the courts will apply the holding in B&B Hardware in other contexts.

On September 30 2015, the Mexican Internal Revenue Service published in the Official Federal Gazette updated foreign commerce dispositions including those applicable to products such as jewellery, clothing, footwear, tobacco products, alcoholic beverages, pharmaceuticals and software, regarding the obligation to state the principal word mark, design, name-and-design or three-dimensional mark in the manifesto exhibited to Customs. The effective date of the dispositions was November 1.

Taking into account the benefits of test data protection, several Latin American countries have integrated proper data protection measures into their national legislation.

This month we take a detour from trade mark issues to cover recent developments in data privacy, a subject that has been the focus of considerable attention from Chinese regulators over the past few years. On September 29 2015, China's National People's Congress promulgated the Ninth Amendment to the PRC Criminal Law, broadening the scope of protection afforded to citizens' personal information, while also inserting new provisions aimed at combating online fraud, pornography and other illegal online content.

In 2010, the EPO introduced the PACE programme, which allowed applicants to accelerate prosecution of patent applications pending before the EPO. Under the PACE programme, the EPO would make every effort to issue a first examination communication within three months of the PACE request.