Microsoft Corp. has made a $7.5 billion bid to take over Nokia Oyj's handset operations. Chinese mobile-phone makers Huawei Technologies Co. and ZTE Corp. asked China's Ministry of Commerce to ensure Microsoft does not increase patent licensing fees on wireless technology, according to two government officials who asked not to be named. The ministry is now conducting an anti-monopoly review of the deal, according to Bloomberg.

Federal Judge Ruben Castillo found characters Sherlock Holmes and John Watson are not protected by U.S. copyright law this month. In a case brought against author Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's estate, lawyer and Holmes scholar Leslie Klinger argued against the estate's contention that the characters of Holmes and Watson remain under copyright protection because 10 of Conan Doyle's stories are still under copyright.

The U.S. Trade Representative wrote in its annual report to Congress about China's fulfillment of trade obligations that China must make "critical changes" to its intellectual property laws. The Trade Representative wrote "counterfeiting and piracy remain at unacceptably high levels and continue to cause serious harm to U.S. businesses across many sectors of the economy."

Tesla Motors Inc is selling its Model S sedans in China, but it has yet to choose a Chinese name, according to Yahoo News. This stems from a trademark dispute with a local businessman, Zhan Baosheng, who registered the common Chinese name for the firm - Te Si La - in 2006 and will not relinquish the trademark to the automaker. His agent, Guangdong-based Jinda Trademark Co, reported he has no interest in selling the trademark.

The U.S. Copyright Office recently released a statement supporting droit de suite, or the right of artists and their heirs to receive royalties on the resale of their works. America currently uses a first-sale doctrine, where artists' royalties begin and end with the first time their work is sold.

A new report from the Brookings Institute by Walter D. Valdivia examines the standard operating procedure of technology transfers at research universities. Valdivia's research found most universities lose money on tech transfers using the common model of licensing intellectual property to the highest bidder. In 2012, the 5 percent of universities that make the most money from tech transfers made 50 percent of the total licensing income of all universities that do so. Current practices create a lopsided distribution of licensing income across research universities, where the same 37 universities consistently perform highly and the rest do not.

The 26th session of the WIPO Committee on Copyright and Related Rights (SCCR) is currently taking place. The first two days were devoted to discussions about broadcasting organizations, and the next two are set aside for talks on intellectual property law exceptions for libraries and archives.

NASA recently opened a new online licensing tool to be used by businesses and individuals interested in the prospect of using the organization's research to develop new commercial products. The QuickLaunch licensing tool is a database of NASA technologies that are available for commercial nonexclusive licensing. In the interest of speeding the licensing process along, each available license has a set initial fee, annual royalty and standard terms.

3-D printers are a remarkable technological advance. The ability to create three-dimensional objects quickly and easily is a valuable one. However, there are challenges to intellectual property protections inherent in these devices. Any new technological advance changes the landscape of intellectual property enforcement somewhat, from the printing press to digital cameras in everyone's pockets. 3-D printers are no exception.

A report from the World Intellectual Property Organization, a United Nations agency, showed patent filings worldwide increased at a greater rate in 2012 than at any time in the last 18 years. Patent filings grew by 9.2 percent worldwide in 2012, with China at the head of this development as the country with the most filings and as the most popular destination for filing patents. China's State Intellectual Property Office saw an increase of 24 percent in patent filings in 2012.

YouTube recently implemented a system called Content ID that monitors videos where the video's creator runs ads. Content ID, an automated system, searches for material that infringes on the intellectual property rights of others. If it finds such content, it flags the video as an intellectual property violation. While for the most part this system exists to prevent abuses of copyright, for some corners of the Internet it is creating an uproar.

GoldieBlox, a toy company that aims to get young girls interested in engineering, recently used a parody of the Beastie Boys song "Girls" in a video advertisement that went viral online. After the musicians' lawyers contacted those of the toy company about the use of the parody song, GoldieBlox filed a pre-emptive action looking for protection from the courts for its decision, according to The San Francisco Chronicle.

The intellectual property chapter of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) Agreement has been the subject of plentiful discussion for the past few weeks. This trade treaty includes intellectual property proposals that were released last month by WikiLeaks. In the normal course of events, the details of such an agreement would be discussed in secrecy until the agreement was signed, according to PC World. However, the whistle-blower website disclosed these details and sparked a lot of discussion in the international relations and intellectual property spheres.

The state of Maryland is partnering with NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt to create a new partnership to attract tech companies to the state. More tech companies mean more talent for NASA to draw from as well as continued economic prosperity in Maryland.

According to a new report from the International Intellectual Property Alliance, jobs involving intellectual property comprise 6 percent of the U.S. GDP. The research said copyright industries added $1 trillion to the U.S. economy in a year. The copyright industries are those involved in the creation, production, distribution and exhibition of copyright materials - from newspapers and books to TV and radio.

Intellectual property is a hot topic in California, as many of the state's most prosperous regions depend on it for their revenue and success. For example, San Diego is the second most inventive city in the world, according to U-T San Diego. For every 10,000 residents, the city files 8.9 new patents, according to the Organization for Economic Co-Operation and Development.

The IP5, a group of the world's five largest patent offices, released its 2012 IP5 Statistics Report recently. The report is available to the public on the organization's website.

As companies are increasingly interested in completing research in the U.S. National Laboratory on the international space station, intellectual property laws are giving some of them reason to pause and consider the ramifications of this decision.