A French court recently convicted online auction giant eBay of selling counterfeit goods through its eBay.fr website and fined the company 20,000 euro (approximately AU$30,000).
The decision resulted from proceedings brought by French luxury products group, Hermes, in connection with listings on the French eBay website advertising the sale of three hand bags by a woman for a total of 3,000 euro. Two of the hand bags were counterfeit. eBay was found to be vicariously liable to the sale of the bags by the woman, who was also ordered to pay damages to Hermes. The amount of damages is not going to make eBay sweat by any means, but the Hermes decision could have repercussions for a number of other legal proceedings faced by eBay (most notably, fashion houses Louis Vuitton and Dior Couture are each currently seeking 20m euro and 17m euro respectively in compensation in a Paris commercial court for similar claims of complacent trafficking in pirated and stolen goods).

The Australian Council on Intellectual Property (ACIP) has announced a review is to be made of what is considered patentable subject matter in Australia.  Specifically, they are going to look into the suitability and sufficiency of the manner of manufacture test as the threshold condition for determining what is patentable subject matter.  Also there is to be a review on the historical requirement that an invention not be generally inconvenient.  

Ranbaxy Australia Pty Ltd (ACN 110 781 826) v Warner-Lambert Company LLC [2008] FCAFC 82 (28 May 2008); Ranbaxy Australia Pty Ltd v Warner-Lambert Company LLC (No 2) [2006] FCA 1787 (20 December 2006)
A recent decision of the Full Court of the Federal Court of Australia has concluded that atorvastatin calcium, the active ingredient in the cholesterol-reduction drug, Lipitor, remains under patent protection, notwithstanding that a patent for a more specific form of that drug was found to be invalid.
Back in 1987, Warner-Lambert Company, LLC (better known as Pfizer Inc.) filed for and obtained patent rights in Australia covering all forms of atorvastatin calcium (the Broader Patent). Three years later, Warner-Lambert Company filed a more restricted patent claiming only the R enantiomer forms of atorvastatin calcium (the Enantiomer Patent). Some time later generics drugs manufacturer Ranbaxy began to make its own form of atorvastatin calcium, only using the R enantiomer form of the drug. In order to distribute the drug legally in Australia though, Ranbaxy needed to remove the obstacles that were the Warner-Lambert Company patents.

The registration of .com.au is regulated by .au Domain Adminstration Ltd (auDA). Domains are registered through approved domain name Registrars. Once registered, the licensed holder of a .com.au domain name could only transfer the domain to another party in a limited set of circumstances (eg. settlement of a trade mark dispute or as part of a sale of business). Changes to the auDA Transfers (Change of Registrant) Policy which came recently came into effect on 1 June 2008 now allows a domain name registrant to transfer their domain name licence to another party for any reason.