Intellectual property

Alternative Dispute Resolution can help keep litigation costs down and reach a speedy conclusion to a dispute.

Brussels is abuzz with speculation that Europe’s fragmented, costly and complex patent regime is about to reform – aided by advances in machine translation. But support is not unanimous.

On current growth rates China will overtake the US to become the world’s largest patent filing jurisdiction by 2012, according to market analysts Evalueserve.

The European Patent Office has launched a €16 million plan to try to ensure that the intellectual property rights newly enshrined in China are upheld.

The State Intellectual Property Office of China has launched a free online machine translation service for patent information searchers.

The UK government has announced the members of a board set up to provide it with strategic advice on intellectual property issues.

Innogenetics NV has settled its patent dispute with the US pharma giant Abbott over hepatitis C genotyping technology.

The European Society of Human Genetics wants to ban the patenting of genes and DNA sequences but allow patents on genetic tests.

In the past two years 2.8 million European internet identities have been registered, making .eu, at its second birthday, the fourth most popular top level domain in Europe and the ninth worldwide.

The UK has launched a new free searchable database for published patents data, allowing users to search and download published patent information, on-line, free of charge.