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CANADA: Percy Schmeiser, a 70-year old farmer, lost a patent infringement suit against Monsanto Canada. Monsanto claimed Schmeiser infringed the GM Canola patent by growing and selling crops from seeds blown into his garden. UK: A British court ruled in favour of Amgen in its patent infringement suit against Roche Holding and Transkaryotic Therapies (TKT). Roche and TKT were held to infringe the Epogen patents in the UK. US: Fruit of the Loom is accusing competitor Gildan Activewear of stealing trade secrets. Fruit of the Loom alleges that former manager Elizabeth Walton passed critical documents to her ex-employer David Cherry. US: Jupiter Media Metrix reached a settlement in its patent infringement suit forcing PC Data out of the business of tracking internet usage. Jupiter also filed suits against two other competitors, NetValue and NetRatings, for patent infringement. Jupiter was represented by Daniel R Harris of Brobeck, Phleger & Harrison. US: Monsanto and Aventis Crop Science settled two lawsuits against each other and agreed to avoid patent roadblocks to the development of genetically improved cotton varieties. Part of the settlement includes cross-licensing under existing cotton transformation patents. US: Pfizer filed a trade mark suit against Lara Williams for using the name Niagara for a fizzy drink. Pfizer contends Niagara is being promoted as Viagra for women. US: Pharmacia filed a trade mark suit against Alcon Laboratories for selling a competing drug with a similar name. Pharmacia allege their drug Xalatan has been harmed by Alcon naming its glaucoma drug Travatan. US: PrimeTime 24 Joint Venture lost its Supreme Court appeal against the National Football League to transmit NFL games to customers in Canada. PrimeTime argued that federal copyright law did not apply outside the US, but the Court held the company's actions violated NFL's copyright. US: Savin Corporation won its preliminary injunction against Main Street Copier & Fax Repair, who operated websites under domain names, incorporating trade names owned by Savin. Savin was represented by David A Einhorn, Andrea Pincus and James M Andriola of Anderson Kill & Olick. US: SunTrust Bank won its suit against Alice Randall for copyright infringement, over her book The Wind Done Gone. SunTrust bank accused Randall of infringing the copyright of the classic novel Gone with the Wind. US: Twelve major Hollywood studios won their case against RecordTV.com, which must pay the studios $50,000 (£35,714) in legal costs. Robert Schwartz of O'Melveny & Myers in Los Angeles represented the studios.

Three years after the European Database Directive came into force, protection is being tested in the courts. Georgie Taylor examines the lessons from recent cases

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.

Jane Mutimear, Bird & Bird, London, Vice president of the Intellectual Property Constituency of ICANN

Fittingly, I am writing this column on April 26 ? the first World Intellectual Property Day. Today, which will become an annual celebration, is the date when the Convention establishing WIPO entered into force in 1970.

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.

Research into the human genome has opened up the possibility of collecting, publishing and even patenting individual genes. Andreas Schrell and Nils Heide explain how a new law will regulate the gene database in Estonia

The month in figures

The pharmaceutical industry has been given another month to sharpen its arguments as it challenges the South African government over patent rights. But it is also fighting against charities, the media and public opinion. Tabitha Parker reports

A ruling that has received wide public attention in the United States, even in the popular press, is the one that the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (CAFC) handed down on February 14 2001 in Amazon.com Inc v Barnesandnoble.com Inc. This ruling vacated a district court's preliminary injunction order preventing Barnes and Noble (BN) from continuing to offer its own so-called "one-click" method for ordering books and other goods online during the course of Amazon's suit asserting that the BN method infringes an Amazon method patent. Despite all the publicity accorded to the ruling, it rests upon very well-established law, widely availed of to defeat preliminary injunction motions in patent infringement suits throughout at least the twentieth century. Its claim to the degree of publicity it received rests upon the case's status as one of the earliest efforts to enforce a "business method" patent against an alleged infringer and not upon the novelty of the legal ruling.