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A monthly column devoted to IP curiosities and controversies, named in honour of John of Utynam - who received the world's first recorded patent in 1449

The US Supreme Court's decision in KSR v Teleflex threatens to change the balance of power between patent owners and alleged infringers in the US. How has it been received by the USPTO and courts?

The US Trade Representative has highlighted Russia and China in its 2007 Special 301 Report

US beer maker Anheuser-Busch has won a victory over nine so-called shadow companies in Hong Kong using an approach other companies may now consider replicating

The UK's Court of Appeal has sent three questions to the European Court of Justice in a dispute over alleged dilution of the Intel trade mark

The USPTO Board of Patent Appeals and Interferences should rely on evidence submitted by parties rather than its own expertise in judging who is the rightful owner of a patent

The manager of a shopping complex in Sarawak has been charged with allowing a tenant to sell pirated CDs in what is believed to be the first criminal landlord liability case in Malaysia

In a case between Taiwan's Fair Trade Commission (FTC) and Philips, the Supreme Administrative Court of Taiwan made a final ruling on April 4 2007. The Court held that a patent pool that included patents owned by Philips, Sony and Taiyo Yuden which were licensed in a package to Taiwan's CD-R manufacturers was not a concerted action. It upheld the ruling of the Taipei High Administrative Court to revoke the decision of the FTC and said that the term "concerted action" used in Article 14 of the Fair Trade Act refers to the action of enterprises with a competitive relationship. Such competitive relationship will be deemed to exist where the goods or services provided by the enterprises are substitutable by each other's goods or services. Since the CD-R manufacturers must use the orange book-compliant techniques covered by the patents owned by Philips, Sony and Taiyo Yuden in combination in order to produce CD-Rs, and since CD-Rs cannot be produced using any one of the patents alone, the Court held that the patents owned by Philips, Sony and Taiyo Yuden are complementary to each other rather than substitutable for each other. As such, there is no competitive relationship among them.

US trade negotiators will be forced to limit the IP demands they make of their trading partners under a new policy announced by American politicians on May 10

The UK Court of Appeal has made it clear that if a court awards damages in a patent infringement case, the order cannot be overturned if the patent is later found invalid by the EPO