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AOL's $1.06 billion patent deal with Microsoft comes as no surprise following recent similar blockbuster deals, but the announcement has led to speculation about Microsoft's plans for the patents, as well as who will be next. The deal, announced last month, will hand over more than 800 AOL patents to Microsoft and licences to an additional 300. The 800 patents have not been disclosed, though the remaining 300 relate to advertising, search, content generation, social networking, mapping and multimedia/streaming technologies, according to AOL. "Sounds very Google-like, doesn't it?" commented Art Monk, vice president of UBM TechInsights. David Pratt, president of asset management firm M-CAM predicted Amazon could be a likely candidate for the next big patent deal. So far, the e-commerce company has seven social networking patents. "If the Facebook IPO is successful, they will look at how to pay investors back, and may look at the monetisation of the user base – [rather than] just getting ad revenue from Facebook," Pratt said. "If they do, and you're an entity that was already a phenomenal e-commerce site and it turned out you were holding e-commerce social networking patents, that might be a really interesting situation to be in."

Applicants for new gTLDs were left vexed last month after ICANN suspended the process due to a technical fault. It later emerged that some applicants had been able to see others' file names and user names.

Margot Fröhlinger, a former senior official in the European Commission's IP team, has taken on a new role. She has joined the EPO as principal director for patent law and international affairs in DG 5. Fröhlinger is widely credited with driving discussions on an EU unitary patent and unified litigation system, although member states have yet to agree a final deal.

A court in Zhejiang province has upheld a decision against a Chinese company infringing Dyson’s design patent for a bladeless fan, in a special open session ahead of this week’s World IP day

Hogan Lovells has become associated with Indonesia law firm Hermawan Juniarto. The Jakarta-based firm has five partners and 17 associates.

A series of court cases has unexpectedly found exceptions for China OEM producers from trade mark liability. Deanna Wong and Tao Yang explain that while it might not affect courts in the long run, it’s already influencing Customs

India’s first compulsory licence may spur a wave of such applications from generics. But the case was very reliant on its facts, explain R Parthasarathy and Adarsh Ramanujan

Following Australia and the UK, New Zealand’s government has released proposals to enforce plain packaging for cigarettes as part of a campaign to eliminate smoking by 2025

An Australian appeal court last month ruled that Google's AdWords programme misleads and deceives consumers and ordered the company to change its system. The full Federal Court gave its decision on April 3 in a case brought against the search engine by the country's consumer watchdog, the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission.

Famous, well-known, notorious, reputed: everyone wants enhanced protection for their trade marks. But should they, and what does it mean if it is? Emma Barraclough explains