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The obligation to protect undisclosed test or other data necessary for the marketing approval of pharmaceutical or agricultural chemical products established by Article 39.3 of TRIPs is a matter of intense debate. It can be argued that scientific data protection constitutes a new and autonomous IP category, and that acknowledging data protection as a new IP category is the only suitable way to protect the data originator's right. GATT- TRIPs provides this acknowledgment.

Many African countries emerged from colonialism with common-law heritages. When considering treaties such as Paris, Madrid, the PCT and those pertaining to ARIPO, practitioners have been guided by the common-law rule: an international agreement can only become part of the domestic law of a subscribing country when it has expressly been enacted into that national law by an Act of Parliament.

The false marking troll is on the prowl following two recent court rulings. Thomas Turano advises companies how to steer clear of these clever critters

Wayne Condon and Eliza Saunders explain how IP owners should incorporate innovation patents into their IP strategy down under

Battles between publishers and Amazon over the right price to sell e-Books have highlighted the difficulty of pricing content online, says Peter Ollier

Legal music streaming services offer a real alternative to illegal downloading sites. So why aren’t they growing faster, asks Emma Barraclough

Hulu has become one of the most popular places for US audiences to watch TV and movies online. Eileen McDermott examines whether the model has a fighting chance

With companies struggling to adapt from traditional to digital models of generating revenue from copyrighted content, a number of businesses have lessons to offer content owners. Eileen McDermott reports

• Federal Circuit bolsters design patents The Federal Circuit in February overturned a ruling by the International Trade Commission (ITC) that said that shoe designs mimicking the popular Crocs footwear did not infringe the company's design patent. In his opinion, Judge Randall Rader of the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit applied the Egyptian Goddess standard for determining design patent infringement. He criticised the ITC for its "excessive reliance on a detailed verbal description in design infringement cases", saying that the written claim description in this case "distorts the infringement analysis by the ordinary observer viewing the design as a whole". Lawyers say that the decision could encourage more IP owners to protect their innovations with design patents.

Following plans to include Israel among the OECD countries, the US is considering downgrading Israel from the US Special 301 Priority Watch List of serious IP offenders. The change is, however, dependent on Israel amending its Patent Law to make it easier to obtain extensions for pharmaceutical patents.