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The ever-growing accessibility, convenience and anonymity offered by e-commerce has permitted counterfeiters to rapidly shift their business models – in some cases entirely – online. To get a sense of the scale of this online scourge all an IP owner need do is to search for their brand on Taobao, Alibaba or other Chinese e-commerce platforms – most of which have a global reach. Those searches will often reveal hundreds, thousands or in some cases millions of advertisements, a large portion of which will be counterfeits.

On October 28 2013, the Guangdong Higher People's Court affirmed the decision made by Shenzhen Intermediate People's Court that InterDigital had abused its dominant market position and thus violated the Anti-Monopoly Law of the People's Republic of China. InterDigital has been ordered to pay Huawei RMB20 million ($3.3 million) in damages. One of the grounds upheld by the courts is that the relevant market should be a collection of the technology licensing market for each patent essential to the 3G telecommunications technologies. This is the first case in China addressing several important issues at the intersection of antitrust law and intellectual property in respect to standard essential patents (SEPs).

In a recent decision, the Federal Court clarified the procedure for disputing trade mark registrations issued in error by the Registrar. The Court held that such registrations cannot be set aside on appeal of the Registrar's decision but must instead be challenged on substantive grounds through cancellation proceedings.

The Brussels Court of Appeal ordered a textile discounter company to pay an indemnification of €600,000 for commercialising bags infringing a bag producer's trade mark in its Belgian and Dutch shops. In an attempt to reduce the damages due, the textile discounter raised, for the first time in appeal, the argument that the Belgian courts would not be competent for the trade mark infringement committed in the Netherlands. The Court of Appeal rejected that argument, and so did the Belgian Supreme Court in its judgment of January 2 2014.

In this issue, we report on a recent decision handed down by the Austrian Supreme Court in a design infringement case.

Under Argentine Law, ownership of a trade mark and the right to the exclusive use thereof are acquired by registration in accordance with Article 4 of Law 22,362 which has adopted the attributive system. Consequently, in principle, if there is no registration of a trade mark, there is no right thereto.

The Australian Patents Act contains a provision that licensees can terminate a patent licence on three months notice after the patent has expired. The recent case of MPEG LA v Regency Media [2014] FCA 180 considered the case of the right to terminate when a patent pool arrangement is in existence and the licence covers multiple pool patents, such as the MPEG patent applications.

With a population of some 165 million, Nigeria is far and away Africa's most populous country. It's also well on track to becoming Africa's biggest economy in terms of GDP. But how is its IP?

On March 31, the US Supreme Court will hear Alice v CLS Bank – a case that is likely to have far-reaching consequences for software and business method patents. We round up the amici briefs and answer the big questions around the controversial case

Does the revolving door or the job-for-life approach work best for IP offices, IP owners and the general public?