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A record number of brand owners filed cybersquatting cases with WIPO last year – and the IP organisation says that the introduction of new gTLDs will stretch trade mark owners' resources still further

A decision by the Court of Justice of the EU in a dispute concerning lists of football fixtures in the English Premier League and other tournaments, will make it harder to protect databases comprising original data. Protection for the football fixture databases under the sui generis database right provided for in the 1996 EU Database Directive had already been ruled out following earlier Court of Justice decisions in 2004.

The Ukraine has launched legal proceedings at the World Trade Organisation over Australia's plans to force tobacco companies to sell cigarettes in plain packs. Ukraine's representative in Geneva requested consultations with Australia on March 13. This is the first step in a legal dispute at the trade body. The Ukrainian government argues that Australia's Tobacco Plain Packaging Act 2011 and its Trade Marks Amendment (Tobacco Plain Packaging) Act 2011 violate the TRIPs Agreement and GATT, the umbrella agreement covering trade in goods. Questions about the compatibility of TRIPs with Australia's new plain packaging law were discussed at the last meeting of the TRIPs Council in February. The issue was placed on the agenda by the Dominican Republic. At previous meetings, a number of WTO member states, including the Ukraine, Mexico, Nigeria, Cuba, Honduras and Zimbabwe, have argued that the law will violate Australia's obligations under TRIPs by preventing cigarette and cigar companies from using their trade marks. Representatives from a number of other countries have argued that they should be able to use the flexibilities in TRIPs for public health purposes.

The man in charge of assessing whether the UK needs a Digital Copyright Exchange has set out what he thinks is wrong with the country’s digital copyright regime

Yahoo! has filed a complaint in the Northern District of California against Facebook, possibly ushering in a new era of patent wars among internet companies. There are 10 patents being asserted, covering advertising, privacy, customisation, social networking and messaging technology. "For much of the technology upon which Facebook is based, Yahoo! got there first and was therefore granted patents by the United States Patent Office to protect those innovations," said Yahoo! in the complaint. The lawsuit followed reports that Yahoo! in February demanded licensing fees from Facebook, which Facebook apparently refused. Charles Verhoeven of Quinn Emanuel is representing Yahoo!, while Cooley's Stephen Neal and WilmerHale's William Lee will be representing Facebook. In a statement, a Facebook spokesperson called the complaint "puzzling" and said: "We're disappointed that Yahoo, a longtime business partner of Facebook and a company that has substantially benefited from its association with Facebook, has decided to resort to litigation."

Although there have been online protests against Bill C-11, they haven’t been on the scale of those in the US against SOPA and PIPA, or in Europe against ACTA Canada's copyright reform bill took a big step to becoming law last month, when the committee on Bill C-11 wrapped up its clause-by-clause review leaving some of the major points of contention – fair dealing exceptions for education, digital locks and ISP liability – unchanged.

Emma Barraclough, London and Kanishk Verghese, Hong Kong

“There’s still a lot of headshaking about this [gTLD allocation] method”

A surprise judgment in Mayo v Prometheus has overturned the US Federal Circuit. Its impact on life sciences patents should not be exaggerated, argue Eileen McDermott and Karen Bolipata

Douglas Masters of Loeb & Loeb, counsel to the National Collegiate Athletic Association, and Ramon Ramirez explain how the organisers of the March Madness basketball tournament safeguard its IP rights