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The month in words

The first Inventor Defense Act provides a new defence to patent infringement in the US. Alex Franco and Dan Altman of Knobbe Martens Olson & Bear in Newport Beach, analyze the requirements, limitations and usefulness of the Act

Among the former USSR countries only Latvia and Lithuania provide for the extension of European patents. Vladimir Anohin and Voldemars Osmans of Agency Tria Robit in Riga analyze the benefits of such protection

Pharmaceutical company GlaxoSmithKline's proposed scheme to restrict exports of cheap medicines from Spain to other parts of Europe is illegal under EU competition rules, according to the European Commission. On May 8, Mario Monti, the EU competition commissioner, ended three years of deliberation by banning the dual-pricing scheme claiming it interfered with the Community's objective of integrating national markets and restricting price competition.

The Russian Patent and Trademark Office (Rospatent) has approved Anheuser-Busch's application to register the Bud trade mark in Russia, following a 12-year battle with Czech brewer Budejovicky Budvar.

Oxford University Press has scored a significant victory against book piracy in the High Court in New Delhi. On November 21, the Court granted the publishing company an order protecting its trade mark Oxford from infringement and passing off, and its copyright in the contents of the Oxford English Dictionary (OED).

The Brussels Court of Appeal recently delivered the first judgment in a Belgian torpedo case. Remco EP de Ranitz of Arnold & Siedsma in The Hague examines the implications of the decision for patent owners and the future of the Belgian torpedo strategy

A decision of special interest to the biotechnology community, Hitzeman v Rutter, 58 USPQ 2d 1161 (Fed Cir 2001), was delivered by the United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (CAFC or Federal Circuit) on March 21. The case arose as an appeal from the US Patent and Trademark Office (PTO) Board of Appeals and Interferences and it involved a determination of who is entitled to receive a US patent covering the particulate hepatitis B surface antigen produced in yeast cells, which is an effective human vaccine against hepatitis B. Prior to this invention, it was doubted by informed scientists that satisfactory hepatitis B surface antigen for vaccine purposes could be achieved using recombinant yeast cells as host cells, since bacterial host cells transformed with DNA encoding the hepatitis B surface antigen had been shown to produce a non-particulate antigen having no capability to impart immunity to hepatitis B in humans.

Japan’s domain name system has seen fundamental changes in the past year. Yasuyoshi Goto and Ari Staiman, of Tokyo Aoyama Aoki/Baker & McKenzie in Tokyo, examine the recently introduced changes

Japanese patent law allows applicants to file so-called product by process claims. But the scope of such claims can be complicated to interpret. Yoshiaki Muto of Tokyo Aoyama Law Office – Baker & McKenzie in Tokyo reviews recent cases on this question