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The University of Manchester and the European Molecular Biology Laboratory's European Bioinformatics Institute (EMBL-EBI) have launched a major new e-science resource for biologists - which could accelerate research into treatments for H1N1 flu and cancer.

Medical scientists from Southampton have contributed to a major new report, setting out plans to enhance the nation's health by improving diet, increasing physical activity and cutting harmful drinking.

Women who get less than the recommended eight hours sleep a night are at higher risk of heart disease and heart-related problems than men with the same sleeping patterns.

Survivors of childhood cancer run particular risks when pregnant and should be closely monitored, the 25th annual conference of the European Society of Human Reproduction and Embryology heard this week.

Randomised Controlled Trials (RCTs) are considered the 'gold standard' research method for assessing new medical treatments. But research published in BioMed Central's open access journal Trials shows that the design of a remarkable 93 percent of 2235 so-called RCTs published in some Chinese medical journals during 1994 to 2005 was flawed, casting doubt on the reliability of research that is likely to influence medical decision-makers.

Mental stress causes carotid artery dilation and increases brain blood flow. A series of ultrasound experiments, described in BioMed Central's open access journal Cardiovascular Ultrasound, also found that this dilatory reflex was absent in people with high blood pressure.

Homeopathy risks being subsumed by modern medicine, argues a historian of science. Not only does this means that homeopathy's heroes have become mere footnotes in history, but it could limit homeopathy's potential to contribute to the treatment of today's pressing medical problems, she says.

Scientists are to study a group of proteins that are highly effective at killing bacteria and which could hold the key to developing new types of antibiotics.

More than 40 scientists, bioethicists, lawyers and science journal editors are calling on their colleagues, policy makers and the public to begin developing guidelines for the research and reproductive use of stem cell-derived eggs and sperm, even though such use may be a decade or more away.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has approved Multaq tablets (dronedarone) to help maintain normal heart rhythms in patients with a history of atrial fibrillation or atrial flutter (heart rhythm disorders). The drug is approved to be used in patients whose hearts have returned to normal rhythm or who will undergo drug or electric-shock treatment to restore a normal heart beat.

MaSfPRTFfK?! The US Patent and Trademark office today released a flurry of 22 Apple patent applications, the most earth-shaking of which may rid the world of one of nightlife's most maddening menaces: off-key karaoke singers.… Case Study: WhatsUp keeps Legoland turnstyles ringing

A slew of new Apple patent applications have been published, revealing the company’s research into a number of iPod and iPhone enhancements. Of the iPhone- and iPod touch-specific patents, two deal with the usability of touchscreen-based devices. One patent outlines haptic display technology that would let users “feel” on-screen graphics as they move their fingers across the screen, while ...

A patent application filed by Apple in February 2008 for multi-touch display screen with localized tactile feedback indicates that the company is researching haptic feedback for possible inclusion in the iPhone and iPod touch. Most telling is a line in the application about the competitive advantages of...

According to a study published in The Columbia Science and Technology Law Review, patents may be harming our ability to innovate. Patents and the Regress of Useful Arts , written by Bill Tomlinson of UC Irvine and Andrew Torrance of University of Kansas School of Law, tested the hypothesis with a game called PatentSim. The game is an online simulation of a pure patent system, a patent-free ...

I have long since lost hope that those who are truly anti-patent and anti-software zealots will ever come to accept that software should be patentable. For reasons that are beyond me they will not even admit that software can be patented. Talking to such a lunatic fringe is hardly worth the time it takes, or the adjida it causes, and seems to approximate a real life Monty Python sketch where the people who claim to have the far superior intellect have such narrow minds that even in the face of overwhelming proof they cling to the irrational and simply incorrect view that software is in fact math and everyone knows math isn’t patentable. Yes, the lunacy is high, very high indeed. So high that the only reason worth continuing to write articles like this is to hopefully prevent the overall anti-patent and anti-invention hysteria that seems to be gaining steam. But the real goal is to try and make sure that any policy makers, decision makers and even those who wear black robes and work at

According to Remnant, the Ubuntu Project takes patent issues seriously and, should a rights holder claim a patent infringement, the board would commit to a review of the claim. Currently, the board as received no claims of infringement against the Mono stack and is unaware of any claims being received by any other similar project. As patents are generally registered to protect against litigation, rather than as an intent to litigate, the board feel that as there is currently no claim of infringement, the patent itself is not a "sufficient reason to warrant exclusion from the Ubuntu Project".

However, opponents of a unified patent system say just the opposite. "With the financial crisis and climate change as looming priorities, the Swedish presidency is going to be hard-pressed to move forward an agenda that has been mired in deep political fights for the last thirty years," said Benjamin Henrion, president of the Foundation for a Free Information Infrastructure (FFII). The FFII argues that a Community Patent will make it easier to pass software patents in Europe, and it says a single patent litigation area is merely a way to circumvent the legal authority of the European Court of Justice, which it trusts could safeguard the E.U. from software patents. "While large US software firms keep up their hopes for cheap enforceable software patents in Europe, the facts on the ground suggest that this debate will crawl, not run," Henrion said.

Microsoft finally got around to substantiating its claims that Linux violates 235 Microsoft patents, and the Linux community quickly set to work coding around those claims.

A Linux developer has published a new kernel patch that provides a workaround to avoid Microsoft's patents on the FAT filesystem. The patch, which has undergone extensive legal review by patent lawyers, could make it possible to use FAT on Linux without having to pay licensing fees to Microsoft.

As the Federal Circuit and Board of Patent Appeals and Interferences continue to decide cases on patentable subject matter by applying the Bilski test, practitioners find it more difficult to draft reliable method claims to software and business procedures. Still to be explored by the court are the limits of the exception they drew in the Bilski decision for methods that transform data directly representative of physical objects or substances. The example discussed by the court in Bilski is the transformation of x-ray attenuation data, produced by a computed tomography scanner, into a particular visual depiction of a physical object.

But worst of all, the article presents Spangenberg as always being right and always having big companies settle (or that he wins his cases). You would think that any profile on Spangenberg would include little facts like that he was caught shuffling patents around in order to sue companies multiple times over the same patent -- despite a settlement promising not to. Doing so eventually cost Spangenberg $4 million. Robin Hood? Or how about his attempts to stretch what highly questionable patents cover? For example, patent 5,493,490, which covers a system for making electronic proposals to buy cars (which, yes, you would think seems obvious enough, but what do you know?), which Spangenberg is asserting against dozens of companies who don't sell cars, but do sell other stuff online.

A new project launched at the NECC show in D.C. on July 1, 2009, Project RED will investigate how technology is revenue-positive at the state level. All U.S. technology-transformed schools will be researched this summer with a report to be released in October.

If rumour is correct and President Obama’s administration manages to install Sotomayor to the Supreme Court by October in time for the Court’s next term, she may be presiding over the much-anticipated judgment in Bilski. The AmeriKat’s brief investigation into Sotomayor’s intellectual property decisions seems to show her leaning in favor of larger corporations and rights holders. However, this limited evidence and Sotomayor’s few judgments concerning patent cases have not given the AmeriKat any definitive guidance on how to predict Sotomayor’s approach to Bilski. If it is anything like her ex-husband’s stance, however, Sotomayor’s judgment will not be forming part of any ground-breaking judgment that many are hoping. Where the AmeriKat has failed to predict Sotomayor’s attitude towards patent claims, she is eager to hear your views. To help you along your way, the AmeriKat suggests you look Sotomayor’s responses to the required Senate Committee of the Judiciary questionnaire.

“We must moreover continue to attempt to harmonise the practise of granting patents for computer-implemented inventions at the European level. This is to be attempted by a common European patent court system (EPLA) in which the member states can voluntarily participate. Thereby a unified procedure and legal certainty are achieved.” --German Federal Ministry of Economics and Technology

8. Central Caselaw “Baumann added that the new court was not intended to "codify software patents", but it was hoped it would provide better intellectual property protection for inventions with embedded software, such as mobile phones and satellite navigation systems.”--James Murray, IT Week [...] 10. Saint Graal „2009 must be the year for the negotiations in Brussels a breakthrough in the creation of the Community patent and a European patent court“ --Brigitte Zypries, German Ministry of Justice [...] 11. UPLS = United Patent Litigation System International treaty Treaty where EU could join Patent injunctions from Turkey No counter legislator Hand picked judges