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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

In 2015, the US Supreme Court issued a decision in B&B Hardware, Inc v Hargis Industries, Inc which held that a court should give preclusive effect to decisions made by the US Patent and Trademark Office's Trademark Trial and Appeal Board (TTAB) if the ordinary elements of issue preclusion are met. Although the particular issue which was addressed in the B&B Hardware case was whether a TTAB decision should have a preclusive effect in the context of a likelihood of confusion analysis, a recent district court decision indicates that the courts will apply the holding in B&B Hardware in other contexts.

Taking into account the benefits of test data protection, several Latin American countries have integrated proper data protection measures into their national legislation.

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 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:

The Legislative Affairs Office of the State Council of China has recently released the latest draft of the amended Patent Law on its website for public opinions (the 2015.12 draft).

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.

Africa is a haven for counterfeiters. Yet things are changing. With the World Health Organisation estimating that 30% of the pharmaceutical market in Africa is counterfeit, African governments understand that counterfeiting creates public health, fiscal and societal problems. They know that they need to provide effective IP enforcement measures. Such measures now feature prominently in much of the new IP legislation in Africa. We will look at a few countries.