Search results for

• US: Microsoft issued 10,000th patent Microsoft received its 10,000th US patent last month, a milestone the company said highlights its goal of obtaining enough patents to maximise the value of its R&D efforts, while still focussing on patent quality over quantity. Addressing the considerably higher number of patents owned by competitor IBM, Microsoft's chief patent counsel Bart Eppenauer said: "We really focus on trying to achieve the right balance. What matters is that our portfolio remains strategically in line with our business model." Last month, IBM became the first company to be issued more than 4,000 US patents in one year, surpassing the total number of patents earned by Microsoft, Hewlett-Packard, Oracle, Apple, EMC, Accenture and Google combined.

German bus maker Neoplan has won a landmark case after two Chinese companies were found to have copied the design of its buses

Given the economic situation, my company is looking to cut costs from our IP department and one option is not to renew some of our patent portfolio. Which factors should I consider in deciding which patents not to renew?

Mark Marfé introduces a survey on obtaining evidence of infringement in the UK, Germany, France and the Netherlands, and looks at how US discovery can help a European case

Organisers estimate that up to 9% of goods presented at German trade fairs infringe IP rights. Bernd Rupprecht explains how IP owners can tackle and deter the threat

IP-related disputes in Taiwan used to be dealt with using a two-pronged resolution mechanism: the Court heard an infringement litigation action, but an invalidation proceeding, if initiated by the defendant as a counter measure, was handled by the Intellectual Property Office. Furthermore, in a civil litigation action related to patent infringement, if an invalidation proceeding was initiated, the litigation action would be suspended pending a final decision on the invalidation proceeding. In such cases, the infringement litigation action was often delayed by the invalidation proceeding, and thus, the damage suffered by any truly injured party could not be addressed quickly.

As a party to the TRIPs Agreement, Singapore accepted the latest amendments to the TRIPS Agreement on September 28 2007 and recently revised the Patents Act to reflect these amendments. With effect from December 1 2008, specific provisions such as sections 2, 56, 60, 62 and 66 of the Patents Act, allow the Singapore Government or any third party authorised by the Government to import any health products or to do anything in relation to the imported health products in times of a national emergency or other circumstances of extreme urgency.

The Mexican IP authorities have implemented new procedures for renewing trade mark applications that have been pending for ten years.

The Canadian Intellectual Property Office (CIPO) has published new procedures for opposition practice. These newest revisions replace the procedures effective October 1, 2007. The primary changes wrought by both the 2007 and 2009 procedures involve the grant of extensions of time for various components of the process.

In a recent decision (T 1790/06-3.3.08), a Technical Board of Appeal (TBA) of the European Patent Office (EPO) has revoked a patent that was thought to be of fundamental importance in the highly competitive field of RNA interference (RNAi).