Top 10 Intellectual Property Headlines from All Regions A recent decision by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit underscores the danger of assuming you can transfer IP licenses in a merger or business sale without the express consent of the licensor. Business methods received serious cross fire during today’s Bilski v. Kappos oral arguments. Justices from all sides of the bench peppered both parties regarding the extent to which broad business method claims are patent eligible subject matter. In a much awaited decision, the Advocate General of the European Court of Justice (ECJ) has considered a number of legal references from France with regard to the legality of Google's use of key words which are the same or similar to well known trade marks in its AdWords advertisement service. A recent ruling in a highly publicized case in the United States District Court for the Central District of California rejected an aggressive legal theory that could have led to broad criminalization of the breach of terms conditioning access to websites and other computerized information. On April 3, 2009, the Second Circuit Court of Appeals ruled against Google in a much-anticipated keyword case, Rescuecom v. Google. On November 9, 2009, the U.S. Supreme Court (Court) heard oral arguments in Bilski v. Kappos, No. 08-964, which is an appeal from the Federal Circuit's decision in In re Bilski, 545 F.3d 943 (Fed. Cir. 2008). On July 1, 2009, the United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit decided an important trademark issue in favor of protecting the names of Indian tribes. Employers are learning the hard way that gaining access to private employee information during workplace investigations can lead to lawsuits, liability and headaches. Ciba Inc. in a move against Sequent [Ciba Inc. & Anr. v. Sequent Scientific Ltd & Ors. Notice of Motion No.3472 OF 2009 in Suit No.2501 of 2009] alleged them for breach of confidentiality before the High Court of Bombay. Various measures to toughen UK data protection enforcement have been in the pipeline for some time. Recent statements by the the Ministry of Justice indicate that certain of these could be brought into force as soon as next "red tape day", i.e. 6 April 2010. | 
