A US company has filed over 117 lawsuits against internet bloggers who have been accused of reprinting copyrighted material on their websites without consent. Las Vegas-based group Righthaven has settled 26 of these cases for...

Five-year-old Sam Houghton, inventor of the "Improved broom", is in the spotlight again as the British Library celebrates the UK's top 15 iconic inventions of the past 10 years. He came up with the idea of a...

The UK has signed a Memorandum of Understanding with China on copyright, seeking to share and develop best practices in promoting IP. According to a press release from the Department of Business Innovation and Skills, the...

A German court has ordered video sharing website YouTube to pay compensation after users uploaded several videos of singer Sarah Brightman in violation of copyright laws. The state court in Hamburg ordered YouTube's parent...

UK jet engine maker Rolls Royce has filed a patent infringement suit against US company United Technologies Corporation (UTC). In a suit filed with the US District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia, Rolls Royce says...

Language software maker Rosetta Stone has filed an appeal against an April ruling that Google didn't infringe Rosetta trademarks by allowing rivals to purchase its name as search engine keywords. Rosetta Stone asked the US...

A recently released document signed by the Advocate General that said the single European patent was incompatible with European law is not the advocate general's opinion, according to the press office at the Court of Justice of...

The US Federal Court of Appeals has upheld patents protecting Eli Lilly's osteoporosis treatment Evista. The decision means that Teva Pharmaceuticals will be prevented from bringing a generic version of the drug to market until...

US Commerce Secretary Gary Locke issued a searing attack against music piracy, declaring it "a growing threat" that "should be dealt with accordingly." "This isn't just an issue of right and...

The Supreme Court will have the final say in Microsoft's $249 million patent defence against i4i. In papers filed with the court, Microsoft has said the lower courts are using an incorrect standard for the proof of prior art...

Brooks Brothers will face a false patent marking suit after the US Court of Appeals gave patent attorney Raymond Stauffer the go-ahead to pursue his claims against the New York-based tailor. The court said Stauffer was within...

After months of negotiations, Google and The Associated Press (AP) have signed a deal which will allow the search engine to display AP's news stories in its new aggregator. The pre-existing agreement between the two sides...

Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen has instigated patent lawsuits against some of the biggest internet technology firms in the world. His comapny, Interval Research, alleges that AOL, Apple, eBay, Facebook, Google, Netflix, Office...

FM radio stations across India will now have to pay a flat fee of 2% of their advertising revenues as royalty to music companies, the Copyright Board has ruled. The order for the first time ties royalty rates to the revenue an...

Taiwanese LCD screen maker Chimei has filed has filed several more patent infringement lawsuits against Sony Corp in China and the US. The suits were filed before the US International Trade Commission (ITC) and in the Delaware...

Online social networking site Facebook has thrown the book at new start-up company Teachbook for including the word ‘book' in its name. In a complaint filed in a District Court in California, Facebook accuses Teachbook of...

Medical device company Roche Diagnostics has become the latest company to face a growing number of false patent marking suits in the US. Roche is accused by US citizen David O'Neill of marking its Accu-Chek blood glucose...

The UK Court of Appeal has re-instated a case brought by an independent retailer against technology firm Oracle over its trademark rights. The US-based firm has been accused of using anti-competitive tactics to prevent the...

The estate of the acclaimed late US photographer Ansel Adams has filed a trademark infringement suit against a man for selling prints he claims are Adams' work. The lawsuit, filed in a district court in San Francisco by The...

The European patent community is reeling from an opinion made public from Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) Advocate General Juliane Kokott, who has said proposals for a single European patent system are not...

  "The godfather of Cleantech", inventor Trevor Baylis, has agreed to speak at this year's Intellectual Property Magazine Awards on 30 November at the Dorchester Hotel in London. Baylis will highlight the lack of...

The United States Copyright Office has granted an exemption to the Digital Millennium Copyright Act which allows "jailbreaking" of Apple's iPhone - modifying the phone so it runs applications that aren't approved by...

Film studio Warner Bros has filed a trademark infringement suit against the makers of a brand of condoms called ‘Harry Popper'. The suit was filed in a Swiss court against the company Magic X which is said to have been...

Bio-pharmaceutical firm Genentech has sent a letter to PDL BioPharma claiming that several of its drugs do not infringe PDL's European patents - a move which throws into doubt royalty revenue which accounts for 30% of PDL's...

US electronics retailer Best Buy is pursuing a priest who tagged his car "God Squad" in a logo similar to that of Best Buy's Geek Squad. Father Luke Strand of Wisconsin has told a local newspaper that he was forced to...

Publisher Playboy Enterprises International Inc, has filed a law suit against Portuguese firm FrestaCom for trademark infringement. FrestaCom, the Portuguese firm which published Playboy under licence, are reportedly still...

  UK firm GB Innomech is launching a new low-cost approach for unique marking of pharmaceutical and related healthcare products to improve traceability and fight counterfeiting. The company is working with clients to embed...

  We're delighted to announce that Intellectual Property Magazine is launching a fundraising partnership with the Confucius Foundation. The foundation rescues children trapped in Chinese slave labour factories making...

The technology licensing firm which reached a $200 million settlement with Microsoft over patents for ways to communicate privately over the internet, has filed a similar suit against Apple and Cisco Systems. VirnetX Holding...

The US Congress has given the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) the authority to spend an additional $129 million of the fees the agency will collect in 2010. This grant was in response to President Obama's July...

Websites and newspapers across the UK have been reporting of an impending trademark dispute between the UK's number two broadcaster ITV and Apple which reportedly intends to launch the ‘iTV' media player. Technology...

Earlier this week, Viacom filed an appeal in its $1billion case against Google after a judge's decision to throw out its earlier copyright claim. In a statement made just after the verdict, Viacom said it would "seek to...

IT firm Oracle has filed a lawsuit accusing Google of patent and copyright infringement over software used in Google's Android platform for mobile phones. Oracle says Android uses Java-based technology which the...

The long-running lawsuit between two major software companies - SAP and Oracle - now appears to have reached some resolution after SAP accepted liability for its former subsidiary's copyright infringement. The dispute centres...

There have been conflicting reports in the media about who exactly asked YouTube to pull the video Newport State of Mind , a spoof of the Jay-Z and Alicia Keyes hit  Empire State of Mind . The spoof song gently parodies...

Stan Lee, famous comic book creator of Spiderman and the X-Men, is facing a trademark lawsuit over his latest creation. Toy manufacturer Super 7 has accused Lee of infringing its mark in his new comic book series Super Seven....

Rupert Mudroch's BSkyB is opposing internet telephone company Skype's trademark registration of its name in the European Union, Norway, India and Brazil. The objections emerged from documents Skype has had to publish as it...

Following a crucial ruling by the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) in March, Google has said it will expand its AdWords policy to allow open bidding on trademarked words as keywords in its search engine. The...

  More than 4 million fake and pirated goods were seized in the UK during 2009/10, according to the latest report from the Intellectual Property Office. The seized goods had an estimated value of £40 million, based on...

  A US bakery executive should not be allowed to immediately join a rival company, a US appeals court has decided. The US Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit sided with the district court that Chris Botticella should not...

  MGM Resorts International has won a trademark infringement lawsuit involving its New York-New York hotel-casino on the Las Vegas Strip, with MGM Resorts winning rights to the potentially valuable Internet domain name...

  Orient-Express Hotels (OEH) received more than £3 million in damages after winning its trademark case against London-based Cipriani restaurant and its parent company. OEH revealed it received £2.6 million...

  Under the settlement, Salesforce.com will receive coverage under Microsoft's patent porfolio for its products and services and also receive support from its back-end server system. Microsoft will be covered under...

Google is to open up its AdWords scheme in mainland Europe following its legal victory in the European Court of Justice (ECJ) in March. Advertisers will be able to buy key words that link advertisements to internet searches,...

A Parliamentary Select Committee has delivered its opinion on New Zealand's Patents Bill. First introduced into Parliament in July 2008, the Bill was intended to deliver a major overhaul of New Zealand's patent law, but...

New Zealand's Designs Amendment Act 2010 received the Royal Assent on 19 April 2010 and will come into effect on 20 April next year unless the Governor General determines an earlier effective date. The Act amends the New...