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The BBC is taking legal action in Italy to prevent a rival version of its hit show Strictly Come Dancing from being shown by Silvio Berlusconi’s television network Mediaset

Ken Nishida has worked at Hitachi for 20 years and has specialised in managing the company’s websites since 1995. He is responsible for planning and managing internet and domain strategies, and oversees production and website design. Nishida previously managed media advertising departments that were responsible for events and exhibitions, after he had worked in sales promotion in the IT department for four years. While most brand owners have remained silent about applying for gTLD, electronics company Hitachi is excited by the prospect of having a .brand domain. "We think .hitachi is an effective way to improve our brand value. This is an innovative movement in the world of the internet," Ken Nishida of Hitachi told Managing IP.

US patent reform is not just a prosecution concern; Paul Hunter and Andrew Cheslock explain how to prepare for the changes imposed by the America Invents Act on litigation

The European trade mark office is getting ready to provide a mediation service for trade mark owners and applicants, which could begin at the end of the month. The Office says it will provide mediation without charge for parties who attend its Alicante headquarters. It plans to offer mediation for appeals cases, but might expand its service to cover cancellation and opposition cases.

Trade mark specialist Guizeng Liu has left CCPIT Patent and Trademark Law Office to form Hanhow Intellectual Property Partners in Beijing, a full-service IP firm comprising 29 lawyers.

A district court ruling has upheld the business model of online music lockers, but left some questions unresolved. The Southern District of New York partially granted the parties' motions for summary judgment in Capitol Records v MP3tunes. The suit was filed in 2007 by EMI and 14 record companies and music publishers, alleging that online music locker MP3tunes infringed their copyrights. In the opinion, Judge William Pauley ruled that online music lockers are eligible under the safe harbours of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) if they adhere to copyright holders' takedown notices concerning specific infringement. While that ruling is good news for MP3tunes and services like it, Pauley also found MP3tunes liable for contributory infringement. MP3tunes operates a second website, www.sideload.com, a search engine that links to third party sites containing free song files. By removing only the Sideload.com links to EMI's works but not the actual content from users' lockers, MP3tunes was found to have contributorily infringed the copyrighted works. MP3tunes founder Michael Robertson was also found to have directly infringed works by downloading songs to his personal storage locker that were identified by EMI as unauthorised.

More than 10,000 brand owners are expected to block their trade mark from being used in a .xxx adult domain. Businesses from outside the adult entertainment industry can use the trade mark blocking system during the sunrise period for .xxx, which was opened on September 7 2011 by ICM Registry. The sunrise period closes on October 28. Trade mark holders make a one-off payment to registrars which blocks a domain for 10 years. The opt-out system, which was a condition of in March 2011, allows businesses to block a domain that matches their mark exactly. Registrars have seen a positive response from their clients. Frederick Felman, chief marketing officer at MarkMonitor, said the interest in the blocking system was the highest since the launch of the European .eu domain in December 2005. "I expect that this will probably result in approximately 50% of the volume we saw in .eu registrations," he said. Chief executive Lawley said he was happy that the .xxx domain had finally been initiated. "It's been a long road and we are very excited, and it's great to see it come to fruition now."

The trade mark has an essential function in the marketing process of pharmaceutical products since it not only distinguishes a product from another one, but in the particular case of the pharmaceutical industry, and even after the expiration of the patent term, it can be extremely useful for maintaining the consumer's adherence to a certain medicament.

The USPTO and the Austrian Patent Office are to extend their patent prosecution highway programme.

Geoffrey Lin has left Hogan Lovells to join the Shanghai office of Ropes & Gray as a partner. Lin will be working with corporate lawyers at the firm, which set up its Shanghai office in July, to value the IP assets within deals and to structure the transactions.