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The Enlarged Board of Appeal (EBA) of the EPO has recently decided case G 1/07 dealing with the exclusion from patentability of surgical methods.

On December 28 2009 the Supreme People's Court of China issued the Interpretation on Several Issues as to the Application of Laws Concerning Patent Infringement Cases. The Interpretation came into effect on January 1 2010.

In the Austrian legal system a concept or defence based on acquiescence or past tolerance of behaviour is unknown – only the statute of limitation exists. Acquiescence has been implanted into it as alien element only in the Trade Mark Law and in the Law Against Unfair Competition as far as it regulates commercially used signs when Austria in 1999 finally implemented fully Article 9 of the EU Trade Mark Harmonisation Directive. No wonder that Austrian trade mark owners and courts still struggle with this concept.

There are many reasons why counterfeiting should be taken seriously. Fake goods pose a threat to public health and safety. Further, counterfeit products cost brand owners millions of dollars each year in lost revenue.

The case deals with questions from the Dutch Court of First Instance on the interpretation of the Biotech Directive in relation to the general patent law. Especially important was whether a claim directed to a gene sequence would have a scope of protection that was determined by the normal patent law (an absolute scope of protection like any chemical compound) or whether the protection of a gene sequence would be limited to the protection as defined in the European Directive on the Protection of Biotechnological inventions (Directive 98/44/EG), a purpose-bound protection.

The obligation to protect undisclosed test or other data necessary for the marketing approval of pharmaceutical or agricultural chemical products established by Article 39.3 of TRIPs is a matter of intense debate. It can be argued that scientific data protection constitutes a new and autonomous IP category, and that acknowledging data protection as a new IP category is the only suitable way to protect the data originator's right. GATT- TRIPs provides this acknowledgment.

Many African countries emerged from colonialism with common-law heritages. When considering treaties such as Paris, Madrid, the PCT and those pertaining to ARIPO, practitioners have been guided by the common-law rule: an international agreement can only become part of the domestic law of a subscribing country when it has expressly been enacted into that national law by an Act of Parliament.

Wayne Condon and Eliza Saunders explain how IP owners should incorporate innovation patents into their IP strategy down under

Battles between publishers and Amazon over the right price to sell e-Books have highlighted the difficulty of pricing content online, says Peter Ollier

Hulu has become one of the most popular places for US audiences to watch TV and movies online. Eileen McDermott examines whether the model has a fighting chance