The draft for the amendment of the Chinese Trademark Law was adopted at the 4th Session of the Standing Committee of the 12th National People’s Congress on August 30, 2013. The amended law will be implemented as of May 1, 2014.The key amendments to the Chinese Trademark Law are summarized below:

The modern business world operates on the widely held notion that by identifying and predicting patterns in the market, one can increase one's ability to surf the waves to market success. This second of a multi-part series of papers, loosely arranged around observations and trends in the various industrial subsectors of the High Tech Sector, continues to examine insights, seek connections and identify hidden structures that may extend more globally than the original observations. We invite international contributions to all editions of this series.

The clean tech market has been going through some major changes in 2013 and the beginning of 2014. Some of the signs continue to be negative such as bankruptcies and a soft initial public offering (IPO) market but there continues to be positive trends in many areas of this sector. Overall investment in clean energy continues to be substantial and the market is re-focusing on addressing the infrastructure deficiencies that are limiting the growth of certain technologies. Renewables represent the most significant dollars invested in the clean tech sector. With the increasing volume of deployment of wind & solar resources, the need for a more intelligent and integrated electricity distribution grid has become a critical path factor. This has also further reinforced the need for cost-effective grid-scale storage technologies.

There are a number of important advances happening in the transportation sector—from connected cars featuring self-driving capability and collision avoidance, and spawning privacy concerns, to plug-in hybrid electric / gas /diesel / compressed air / hydrogen / fuel-cell / solar and nuclear vehicles, to roadway-embedded and microwave-beaming charging systems; not to mention fleet-management logistics systems, advanced turbo-charging systems, fuel-saving navigation systems, distributed traffic-monitoring systems, instrumented self-diagnosing roadways, energy-recovery devices and mass-transit advances.

The Aerospace and Transportation industrial subsector differs from many of the other High Tech industry subsectors in its composition: primarily industry OEMs (Original Equipment Manufacturers), and predominantly mature multinational industries. The concerns of these industry OEMs are different than smaller companies, centering around antitrust, export control and other government regulations, and issues of international law. The stakeholders involved in these processes have different requirements than those of less mature market sectors. However, sometimes the resultant solutions, though inspired by these specific circumstances, are applicable beyond them. This article examines two topics: How Intellectual Property is Handled Under U.S. Government Contracts & Licensing Agreements, and U.S. Industry and U.S. Manufacturing Requirement Preference Concepts of U.S. Government Patent Policy.

In 2014 we are celebrating 20 years of the TRIPS agreements aimed at harmonizing the treatment of intellectual property rights in global economic trade. The Doha agreements in 2001 gave the least developed countries (LDCs) extra time for adopting the TRIPS agreements. As the agreed deadline for this implementation was extended to 31 December 2015 in November 2013, what is the future for the development of intellectual property rights in the least developed countries?

Cooperation between research organizations (ROs) and industrial organizations facilitates the flow and use of scientific and technological knowledge. Competitiveness of the industry and the rise in the welfare of societies is increasingly connected to the incorporation of innovative technology in products and services.1 An important objective of the European Union (EU) innovation system is to convert knowledge into technology, to link technological and scientific knowledge generators with users and to generate social and economic benefits from the public investment in Research & Development (R&D).

In the early 1800s, an author was understood as "[o]ne who produces, creates, or brings into being; as, God is the author of the universe." 1This antiquated definition heavily emphasized an author's creation power and remains critical when understanding the original purpose of the copyright clause.2 Early American case law and copyright statutes heavily focused on a work's creation when determining copyright assignment, even when authors created what came to be known as works for hire.

It is somewhat simplistic to say that licensing as a form of technology transfer relies heavily on intellectual property rights. When the validity of those rights is brought into question, the value of those rights as a licensable proposition diminishes.At the present time in the United States and in Australia the patentability of certain types of software patents, in particular broadly claimed business method patents, is being questioned. Although the legal basis for software patents in Australia is different from the USA, if the Courts in each jurisdiction take a restrictive view of patent eligibility, there will be consequences for existing licences involving software patents and licensing activity generally.

On 1 November 2013, the South African Department of Trade and Industry published the draft "Promotion and Protection of Investment Bill" (the "Draft Bill") for comments. The Draft Bill comes shortly after South Africa decided to unilaterally terminate its bilateral investment treaties ("BITs") with certain European states and specifically Belgium, the Netherlands, Luxemburg, Germany, Spain and Switzerland.

Giving Away Products Embodying an Invention Triggers Patent Exhaustion and Can Prevent Patent Owners from Collecting Royalties on Those Products The doctrine of patent exhaustion limits patent owners to a single compensation for their patented products or methods by preventing them from charging additional royalties on a patented item once an authorized sale of the item occurs. In a recent case, LifeScan Scotland, Ltd. v. Shasta Technologies, No. 2013-1271 (Fed. Cir. Nov. 4, 2013), the Federal Circuit held that a patent owner's ability to collect royalties is exhausted even when it gives away that item, if the item substantially embodies the inventive aspect of the claims.