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Blayne Peacock, Ewan Bewley and Gerald Samuel compare the approaches to patentable subject matter of the patent offices in mainland China, Hong Kong, Singapore and Malaysia

The effect of the EU’s regulation on health claims in foods is only now becoming apparent. Producers may find they have to prove claims as extensively as pharmaceutical companies, say Audrey Horton and Mary Smillie

Bob Stembridge presents data that suggests business method patents continue to be viable, despite judicial uncertainty

The effects of the anti-counterfeiting trade agreement (ACTA) vary greatly among signatories and potential signatories. Those detailed here, from a selection of major jurisdictions, create a picture of how ACTA will harmonise international IP enforcement

A three-person UDRP panel in The New York Times Company v Name Administration made a potentially game-changing decision, by endorsing the doctrine of laches defence. The domain dealbook.com was registered prior to the trade mark, which meant the complaint was denied. But the panel explicitly made an argument for a laches defence anyway. It is "a valid defense in any domain dispute where the facts so warrant," wrote the National Arbitration Forum panel.

The US Supreme Court upheld a lower court decision in December that the Copyright Act could not be used to apply the first sale doctrine to goods manufactured overseas, after it declined to issue an opinion in Costco v Omega. The 4-4 split, with Justice Kagan recusing, affirmed a decision in a closely watched case involving a model of watches made in Switzerland, sold to an authorised foreign distributor, and imported to the US through an unauthorised sale. The ruling leaves several questions of international copyright exhaustion unanswered. "Nobody carried the day," said Jeanne Gills of Foley & Lardner. "We haven't seen the last of the issue." The ruling essentially grants foreign manufacturers greater control over pricing in the US and the grey market's distribution of their goods. This could present challenges for online retailers such as Amazon and eBay, known for providing luxury products, many from abroad, at discounted prices. "If you're a consumer or a discount retailer, it places a great burden on you," Gills said. "How do you find out where the goods came from?"Until the law is amended or the issue is clarified by the courts, manufacturers may try to avoid these issues through contract law and alternate marketing strategies.

India's Ministry of Commerce and Industry has introduced changes to allow practitioners to search the Trade Mark Registry's online database and to raise fees. The official notification bringing the changes into effect appeared on December 29 and PH Kurian, the controller general of Patent Trade Marks, Copyright and Designs issued a public notice on January 13. The Registry has now ended its practice of conducting official trade mark searches, but has made its online database available free of charge. The new price for filing a trade mark application in a single class has gone up from Rs2,500 ($55) to Rs3,500 ($77). This will apply to any applications filed on or after December 29. The changes come after a consultation in September last year. "The [Registry] deserves a standing ovation for pushing these amendments through, and delivering on their promises in record time," commented Indian site, Spicy IP.

The EPO says it received 232,000 applications in 2010, a 10% increase on the previous year. The figure includes Euro-PCT applications.

The Court of Appeal in London has upheld a decision that two European patents asserted by IPCom are invalid.

The Federal Circuit overturned a patent invalidity finding, citing the Bilksi judgment, in a case between Research Corporation Technologies and Microsoft concerning process patents. In the opinion, Rader said that the Supreme Court in Bilski said the Section 101 patent-eligibility inquiry "is only a threshold test". Noting that the Court had rejected the Federal Circuit's machine-or-transformation test, he said: "[S]ection 101 does not permit a court to reject subject matter categorically because it finds that a claim is not worthy of a patent." For processes, said Rader, the Supreme Court "refocused" the inquiry on the question of whether the subject matter is abstract - but did not provide a rigid formula or definition for abstractness. He went on to conclude that because the inventions in the patents are directed to patent-eligible subject matter, "the process claims at issue, which claim aspects and applications of the same subject matter, are also patent-eligible".