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The Patent Trial and Appeal Board has made it hard for patent owners to amend their claims. Patrick Doody outlines the problems this causes and how to fix them

Katrina Burchell, the former head of Unilever's trade mark team has joined UK firm Irwin Mitchell. Burchell began her career in trade marks at Allied Lyons before moving to ICI and Wildbore & Gibbons. She joined Unilever in 1997 where she became head of the global trade mark team. She notably oversaw the outsourcing of the administration of Unilever's 160,000 trade marks – the world's largest trade mark portfolio – to Baker & McKenzie in 2007. In 2012 Burchell joined French luxury goods company PPR as group IP director, splitting her time between Paris and London and managing a portfolio that includes Gucci and Yves Saint Laurent.

Following the USPTO’s announcement that it will review its post-Myriad examiner guidance, patent lawyers say that a court challenge is likely if the agency does not change the policy

You might recognise Apple’s sleek, minimalist stores, if only for the crowds of twenty-something hipsters tapping away at devices inside. But is its design capable of trade mark protection in Europe?

An unusual amount of US patent infringement lawsuits, Mars suing Hershey’s for trade mark infringement over its Malteser product, Foxconn selling communication technology patents to Google, and Quentin Tarantino’s copyright infringement lawsuit against Gawker Media being dismissed were among the stories hitting the headlines in the past week

Patent lawyers at a conference in New York yesterday were bluntly critical of top US judges, with one panellist saying a high school student could do better than the Supreme Court’s opinion in Myriad and another suggesting that the Supreme Court does not respect the Federal Circuit

The fashion world had been abuzz in 2012 and 2013 about footwear designer Christian Louboutin's claim of exclusivity to the use of the colour red on the sole of footwear. Battles over claims of rights in particular colours did not, however, end with the resolution of the Louboutin case and have extended beyond just the fashion industry. The issue of ownership of colour trade marks recently raised its head again in a precedential decision issued by the USPTO's Trademark Trial and Appeal Board (TTAB) addressing a petition for partial cancellation or restriction of registration filed by Covidien LP against a trade mark registration owned by Masimo Corporation.

At the Fordham IP Conference in New York yesterday, David Kappos, partner at Cravath, Swaine & Moore and former director of the USPTO, read an open letter to Abraham Lincoln. Managing IP reproduces his speech from the Intellectual Property Leaders panel here

James Nurton rounds up five bits of news from the first day of the Fordham IP Conference in New York

Plans to set up specialised IP courts in China appear to be picking up steam. What changes will they bring to China’s IP system?