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The debate over the patentability of isolated DNA has raged around the world. Tania Obranovich compares the two Myriad decisions from the highest courts in Australia and the US and explains how the Australian decision has called into question what had long been thought of as a fundamental pillar of Australian patent law

This month we take a detour from trade mark issues to cover recent developments in data privacy, a subject that has been the focus of considerable attention from Chinese regulators over the past few years. On September 29 2015, China's National People's Congress promulgated the Ninth Amendment to the PRC Criminal Law, broadening the scope of protection afforded to citizens' personal information, while also inserting new provisions aimed at combating online fraud, pornography and other illegal online content.

In 2010, the EPO introduced the PACE programme, which allowed applicants to accelerate prosecution of patent applications pending before the EPO. Under the PACE programme, the EPO would make every effort to issue a first examination communication within three months of the PACE request.

In June 2015, in a case concerning patent validity, the French Supreme Court (Cour de cassation) issued a decision (Cass Com 13-15.862) relating to confidentiality obligations to prevent any risk of public disclosure in an inter partes relationship:

On March 23 2016 the new Trade Mark Regulation 2015/2424 will enter into force. This Regulation is the result of the European Commission's pledge to make the new trade mark registration system more accessible, efficient, flexible, reliable and predictable.

In the first of a series of articles looking at hypothetical scenarios involving the UPC, Wouter Pors considers a case involving an implementation patent in the electronics industry

Austria, like Germany, has had for many decades a dual system for judging patent infringement: infringement itself is the realm of the Commercial Courts (or Penal Courts) while nullity of the underlying patent can only be stated by the Patent Office and its Appellate Courts. Such a nullity decision has then an effect erga omnes which means that the patent is struck out of the registers. That split is mitigated in that the Appeal Courts judging the infringement question are the same as those for the Patent Office decisions and usually decide on nullity prior to their judgment concerning infringement. Only in the proceeding for an interlocutory injunction has the Court to judge nullity of the patent itself as a preliminary question. But very often the patent is upheld in this procedure and the percentage of uncertainty of the Court about it is expressed by the level of security payment imposed on the plaintiff.

The Australian Appeal Court has recently clarified the position of software and business method patents in Australia. In Commissioner of Patents v RPL Central Pty Ltd, the Full Federal Court again aligned Australia with a US-centric position akin to that set out in the Alice Corporation case.

In a recent decision (Kochgefäß [Cooking pan], X ZR 81/13) the Federal Supreme Court (FSC) once again dealt with the requirements of an infringement under the doctrine of equivalence.

As of January 1 2016, Law 4335/2015 has come into force. This law was passed in the context of structural reforms imposed by Greece's creditors as a condition to the bailout with an objective to accelerate judicial proceedings and includes important amendments to the code of civil procedure.