From The Parliament .com

"The two sides concluded the latest FTA talks, the sixth round of discussions, in Brussels last week. The next round of negotiations are due to take place in Canada in April.

Ottawa-based “technology innovation and licensing company” Wi-LAN settles its ED Texas lawsuit against Broadcom.

http://www.wi-lan.com/company/news-and-events/News-Details/2011/broadcom-and-wilan-reach-agreement-to-end-litigations/default.aspx

Big recent news was Target (US) 's aquisition of Zellers, a Canadian chain of discount stores, for $1.8 billion from HBC.

In 2010, Canadian companies were granted 5,223 U.S. patents - up 20% from 2009. The Globe and Mail reports HERE, but also notes:

A note from colleague Victor So, who is both a pharmacist and a lawyer: "FYI - this shortage is real. Every time I step in the pharmacy I see more and more drugs that are out of stock."

There was an interesting article in the Globe and Mail on Saturday about patents in the petroleum sector. The lead:

Intel and NVIDIA have settled their patent-plus litigation, with Intel agreeing to license NVIDIA's patents for $1.5 billion (US). The Intel press release is HERE, and the Globe and Mail's less-than-helpful article is HERE (hey Globe - might you at least tell us what sort of lawsuit they are settling, or the basis for the suit?).

Yesterday, the Court of Appeals of the Federal Circuit (the CAFC if you're casual, Fed. Cir. if you're formal ;) ) released a big decision if you're interested in monetary remedies for patent infringement. Uniloc USA v. Microsoft.

Anyone know any good criminal law associations to join? I've apparently been practicing criminal law for the past few years without knowing it ;)

The Doha Round of trade negotiations at the WTO has been underway since 2001. Every so often one could read about talks "collapsing", deadlines being missed and/or extended, and various commentaries about how awful it was that there was no agreement yet.

An article appeared in the National Post today by John Ivison discussing the Europe/Canada free trade deal talks. The article specifically brings up the pharmaceutical/IP issue as a stumbling block:

At recruiting! For the second year in a row, the Ultra Vires student newspaper at the University of Toronto Faculty of Law has named us the top boutique firm for recruiting.

An interesting note via IPKat: The European Patent Office and Google have signed an agreement to use Google's machine translators to translate patent documents into the many languages used in Europe.

As has been widely reported, RIM has sued KIK Messenger for patent infringement, breach of contract etc. etc. in the Federal Court. KIK Messenger's texting app went viral over the last two months; several people have pointed out that it challenges the market positioning of RIM's own BBM service. Another twist is that the founder of KIK, Ted Livingston, used to work for RIM, and the suit accuses Livingston of violating his confidentiality agreement with RIM.

A should-read if you're interested in high tech patent litigation - the Globe and Mail has an article on Ottawa's latest high-tech industry - tearing apart high tech devices looking for proof of patent or other intellectual property infringement.

The Federal Government has appealed the recent Amazon case dealing with patentable subject matter. HERE is a copy of the Notice of Appeal (from Alan Macek's ippractice.ca). Unsurprisingly, the government is appealing on a long list of grounds.

A quick... OK, long blog post on yesterday's PM(NOC) decision concerning a Janssen patent covering galantamine. Matt Dugas, who wrote this, Nathaniel Lipkus and Tim Gilbert argued the case.

From the newspaper today, Shoppers is moving ahead with its plan to market its own private-label generic drugs despite the disapproval of the Ontario government. They plan to sell in seven other Canadian provinces, as well as export products. They are also challenging the Ontario government's regulations forbidding pharmacies from selling their own store-brand products.

The recruiting season just ended. Congratulations to Patrick Dyke, Zarya Cyrander and Harman Dhillon who will be Gilbert's LLP summer students!

So, last Friday - actually, two weeks ago Friday, where does the time go? - I participated in Foreign Affairs’ briefing phone call regarding the Canada-European free trade negotiations. Overall, the negotiators are reportedly making progress - “better than the two sides had anticipated.”