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One of the world's most valuable domain names has just got more expensive ? $65 million more. On April 3, a Californian court awarded $65 million to Gary Kremen, who originally registered the sex.com domain name in 1994.

ICANN is to set up a working group to make policy recommendations concerning the controversial multilingual domain (MLD) names.

Europe's highest court has set back Dutch company Libertel's bid to register the colour orange for its telecommunications business in a decision on May 6.

A case that will decide how to calculate the length of patent protection for new medicines in the EU has been referred to the European Court of Justice for a preliminary ruling.

Business methods should remain unpatentable. That was the clear message coming from the UK last month. In a statement issued on March 13, the government stood firm in its position not to allow the patentability of business methods and to allow no change in the guidelines for patenting software. The government's stance is likely to bring the UK into direct conflict with the European Patent Office, the United States and the UK software industry, which believes it is losing out to its American colleagues.

Jeremy Phillips looks again at the function of trade marks in the light of three cases which are heading towards the ECJ

In three rare decisions on patent law, the Supreme Court of Canada has clarified controversial questions about the date of construction and claim language. James D Kokonis QC, Dennis SK Leung and Colin B Ingram explain

The Federal Patent Court recently acknowledged the principal registrability of a new kind of trade mark, a so-called "positioning mark" (see for instance BPatG 28W (pat) 66/99 Positionierungsmarke). With this new kind of trade mark, signs such as single letters or exclamation marks, which are otherwise considered not to be registrable, may be registered, if the following minimum requirements are fulfilled: The sign appears on a specific part of the product, eg a jeans pocket or the flank of a tennis shoe. It appears always at the same place of said part of the product. It appears in a constant size (absolute or relative to the size of the goods). It exhibits a particular colour contrast with respect to the goods labelled with the positioning mark. Therefore, in an application for a positioning mark the definition of the carrier (the goods onto which the label is affixed), the position of the sign on the carrier as well as its size of must be given. It is further advisable to give a short description of the mark.

US membership of the Madrid Protocol may be only a few months away according to Bruce MacPherson, director of external affairs of the International Trademark Association. Thanks to pressure from US companies and the INTA, the legislation to implement membership, first considered in 1989, is nearing the end of its journey through Congress. Attempts to implement the Protocol have not been easy. It has been dogged by conflict with the EU, and lately by complications over Cuba's role.

A recent High Court decision on copyright infringement has demonstrated the importance of distinguishing the author of a work from the rightful copyright owner of the work. As copyright is not registrable in many countries including Singapore, the locus standi to sue for copyright infringement does not stem from a simple registration certificate. It is always paramount to trace the copyright from the author of the work to the plaintiff in order to ensure that the latter has the requisite capacity to sue.