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A US district court has invalidated seven patents on human genes, in part based on the Federal Circuit's ruling in In re Bilski

A recent action brought under the Anticybersquatting Consumer Protection Act (ACPA), in which Cohen Pontani Lieberman & Pavane LLP (CPLP) prevailed, demonstrates best practices for approaching ACPA actions. The case, Newport News Holdings Corp v Virtual City Vision, Inc, et al (ED Va 2009), involved NNHC, a women's clothing company that owns trade mark registrations for NEWPORT NEWS. The defendants registered the domain name NEWPORTNEWS.COM and initially used it as a virtual city website, but later transformed the website into one offering women's clothing.

Following the Prometheus case in the US, Jason Rutt compares the approaches of nine different patent offices to diagnostics, and finds surprising variety

Zoe Lofgren James Sensenbrenner Lamar Smith At the end of June the US House of Representatives passed a patent reform bill six years in the making, joining the Senate in passing legislation shifting the US to a first-to-file system. The impact (see box) has not been altered fundamentally by the various amendments, but their debate was certainly controversial. The bipartisan vote of 304-117 featured an extremely rare re-vote and an unrelated disruption by protestors.

New Zealand has introduced legislation to provide greater protection to sponsors of important events from ambush marketing: the Major Events Management Act 2007.

Eileen McDermott, Karen Bolipata and Simon Crompton report from INTA’s Annual Meeting in San Francisco

The Romanian State Office for Inventions and Trademarks (SOIT) has rejected a national combined trade mark application Slims EA, filed for registration for products in class 34 "unprocessed, semi-processed or processed tobacco; tobacco products; cigarettes; cigars and cigarillos; cigarette filters/cigarettes; articles for smokers; matches/lighters and ashtrays for smokers that are not made of precious metals" due to the conflict with the previous national combined trademark Eve, registered for products in class 34 "tobacco, raw or manufactured including cigars, cigarettes, cigarillos, tobacco for roll your own cigarettes, pipe tobacco, chewing tobacco, snuff tobacco; tobacco substitutes (not for medical purposes); smokers' articles, including cigarette paper and tubes, cigarette filters, tobacco tins, cigarette cases and ashtrays not made of precious metals, their alloys or plated with such; pipes, pocket apparatus for rolling cigarettes, lighters; matches".

The latest draft of ACTA was published this week. Managing IP provides a summary of comments so far

Grant Shoebridge and Jacinta Flattery-O’Brien of Shelston IP review the issues raised by a parliamentary inquiry into gene patents

A series of court cases has unexpectedly found exceptions for China OEM producers from trade mark liability. Deanna Wong and Tao Yang explain that while it might not affect courts in the long run, it’s already influencing Customs