The National Association of Manufacturers recently released a study by Bill Kerr, associate professor at Harvard Business School, and Chad Moutray, chief economist for the NAM. The study found unfair competition facilitated by stolen software has cost U.S. manufacturing nearly $240 billion and 42,220 jobs between 2002 and 2012.

U.S. District Judge Laura Taylor Swain ruled earlier this month that Costco Wholesale Corporation can proceed with its defense that seeks to prove the "Tiffany setting" is now a generic term, according to Rapaport. Tiffany & Co. sued Costco last year, claiming the wholesale store infringed its trademark "Tiffany setting" and in so doing diluted Tiffany's brand, counterfeited its jewelry and used unfair advertising schemes to sell diamond rings.

Academic publisher Elsevier, a subsidiary of Reed Elsevier that publishes journals in the medical, technical and scientific fields, has begun to send takedown notices to universities that display the works of their own faculty online. According to the Washington Post, Elsevier is within its legal rights to do so, as it owns the copyright to these works. That is not in dispute, but longstanding industry practice has generally been to overlook academics distributing their own work. Elsevier is now changing that practice and adopting a harsher stance on its copyright ownership.

Cochlear Ltd., an Australian manufacturer of hearing implants, lost an infringement trial over patents related to Cochlear implant technology recently in Los Angeles, according to Bloomberg. The jury awarded $131.2 million in damages to the Alfred E. Mann Foundation for Scientific Research, a nonprofit medical research foundation.

Two screenwriters, Stephanie Counts and Shari Gold, have accused Fox's television show "New Girl" of stealing elements of their television pilot script, according to Inside Counsel. Counts and Gold have filed a lawsuit against "New Girl" creator Elizabeth Meriwether and director Jake Kasdan alleging Fox's comedy is based on their own script for a television series called Square One.

The Chinese Ministry of Public Security released figures on Jan. 21 about its efforts to stem intellectual property infringement, according to The Global Times. As many as 59,222 suspects of intellectual property violations were seized by the Chinese police last year. These suspects were involved in 55,180 cases whose estimated value totals 173 billion yuan, or approximately $28 billion.

William and Kate, England's Duke and Duchess of Cambridge, have separately established companies to protect their intellectual property rights, according to Metro. Prince William founded a firm named APL Anglesey, and Kate started CE Strathearn. Prince Harry, William's younger brother, also established a company to protect his own intellectual property, called Tsessebe.

Marvell Technology Group Ltd received a jury verdict of $1.17 billion in a case in which it was found that the company infringed the intellectual property of Carnegie Mellon University. Marvell subsequently countered, asking a federal judge to cut the award by about $620 million on the basis that the university delayed its lawsuit to an unreasonable degree.

IBM filed more U.S. patents than any other company in 2013, marking the 21st straight year the company has taken this honor, according to Bloomberg. The company's 6,809 patents in 2013 also created an annual record. More than 31 percent of these came from overseas, as IBM has inventors in 41 countries. The company is moving away from hardware into analytics and Web-based computing. It is also about to create a separate division for its cognitive technology named Watson, which will be able to analyze data and answer user queries about it, according to Bloomberg.

A company that manages intellectual property for twenty-five companies, including Apple, Amazon and Sony, has settled a lawsuit filed by Boston University alleging infringement of a professor's patent for producing blue light-emitting diodes (LEDs), according to university news source BU Today. The dollar amounts in the settlement were not disclosed. The settlement itself was negotiated with RPX, a firm that manages intellectual property for corporate entities through acquiring companies' patent rights. RPX will pay BU the undisclosed sum, and all members of RPX will be able to use the technology. Firms in litigation with BU that are not members of RPX will continue to be the subject of lawsuits.