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In a recent decision, the German Federal Supreme Court (Bundesgerichtshof) added to its output on claim construction and infringement issues, taking the opportunity to clarify when a so-called impaired embodiment may fall within the scope of the patent.

The French Patent and Trademark Office (INPI) is moving on October 22 2012. The purpose is, among others, to gather together several departments that were disseminated in Paris and its surroundings.

The Enlarged Board of Appeal (EBA) of the EPO recently issued a decision on the question: "Is a patent proprietor's request for correction of the grant decision under rule 140 EPC which was filed after the initiation of opposition proceedings admissible?"

Employees have an obligation under Austrian law to communicate their service inventions to their employer "without delay". They have on the other hand the right to file themselves patent applications for their inventions. But there are no consequences in the law if they do not communicate their inventions to their employer, besides general damage claims that normally don't exist when they file patent applications.

Our courts have recently resisted an attempt to extend the operation of injunctions globally to entities which are part of a global group and may be operating by common design in many jurisdictions.

If the sole legal reaction to patent infringement was ordering the infringing party to cease the inappropriate use of the invention, without reasonable economic compensation to the damaged party, this would not only send a message of eventual impunity to potential infringing parties, but also stimulate this type of conduct because such parties would benefit from the illegally obtained revenue. Both laws and judges, when applying these laws, should therefore endeavour to facilitate proper damages compensation in cases of patent infringement.

Hogan Lovells has increased its IP presence in Silicon Valley and San Francisco with five lateral hires. Jennifer Lantz, Steve Levitan, Clark Stone (left to right) and Edward Kwok join from Haynes and Boone and will be based in Hogan Lovells' Silicon Valley office.

A Beijing court has awarded seven Chinese authors, including popular blogger Han Han, damages against search engine Baidu for copyright infringement. The court held that Baidu's Wenku literature searching service illegally published copies of the plaintiffs' works. The seven authors received damages totalling Rmb145,000 ($22,937) from Haidian District People's Court, which was far lower than the amount they requested. The court also denied their requests that the service be shut down and for a public apology. Han, who sued after three of his books appeared on Wenku, had asked for Rmb760,000 and closure of the online library. He was awarded just over Rmb80,000, with the court saying that the evidence of the severity of infringement was insufficient.

OHIM is on the search for a new president of its Boards of Appeal after revealing that Paul Maier is to leave the post to oversee the Office's new IP Observatory. Three years ago the European Commission set up a European Observatory on Counterfeiting and Piracy as a platform for coordinating actions to protect IP rights throughout the EU. In March EU member states agreed to rename it the European Observatory on Infringements of Intellectual Property Rights and hand its management to OHIM, the Alicante-based office that grants Community trade marks and designs.

The USPTO's Patent Review Processing System went live on September 16, and within 24 hours 13 petitions for post-issuance proceedings had been filed under the America Invents Act. The petitions included 10 inter partes review (IPR) petitions and three requests for review of patents under the covered business methods programme (CBM). Intellectual Ventures filed four of the IPR petitions. All of them relate to patents owned by Silicon Valley company Xilinix, which supplies programmable logic devices used to build digital circuits.