US: The Senate passed the Family Entertainment and Copyright Act of 2005, a law which criminalizes the recording of films in movie theatres and the posting of unreleased films and music on the internet. A similar bill failed to pass last year after a dispute concerning an unrelated bill. US: Microsoft won the latest round in its battle against a $521 million patent infringement award, after the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit largely overturned a ruling of the District Court for the Northern District of Illinois. The Federal Circuit's decision, challenged the lower court's finding that a patent owned by the University of California, and licensed exclusively to Eolas, was valid and infringed by Microsoft. The case was remanded back to the district court for further argument. US: USPTO director Jon Dudas said that the agency was launching a series of reforms that will speed up patent prosecution and save applicants about $30 million a year. The reforms have three key features: firstly, applicants can now request an appeal conference to determine the merits of their appeal against a patent rejection before having to file a Notice of Appeal and an appeal brief; secondly, changes to the reexamination procedure will see three-person examiner panels replace a single panellist; and Dudas promised that there would be more detail in published USPTO data. US: The University of California led all US academic institutions in receiving the most patents from the USPTO in 2004. This was the 11th consecutive year that the University of California has topped the patent rankings (see below). Top patenting US universities (2004) Rank Number of patents University (Rank 2003) Number of
