May 21, 2013 - Jurors in U.S. District Court in Boston found last week that the Kohler Co. willfully infringed two patents belonging to an affiliate of the Westerbeke Corp., a Massachusetts-based manufacturer.

May 2, 2013 - Purdue Pharma and Actavis, Inc. have resolved the patent infringement litigation that was pending between the two companies in a district court in New York.

May 1, 2013 - Mutual of Omaha, the insurance company and bank operator known for its "Mutual of Omaha's Wild Kingdom" television series, has sued carpet manufacturer Couristan for trademark infringement for using the phrase "Wild Kingdom" to sell safari-themed carpets.

May 1, 2013 - CopyTele, a non-practicing entity that monetizes and enforces patents, filed a patent lawsuit against Microsoft over the alleged infringement of two patents. CopyTele claims that Skype, which is owned by Microsoft, infringes two patents related to Web-based secure peer-to-peer communications.

The two patents-at-suit are a "Method and apparatus for securing e-mail attachments" and "Portable telecommunication security device." Both patents issued in 2005.

April 23, 2013 - Viacom lost its copyright infringement lawsuit against YouTube when a federal judge ruled that YouTube was protected by the "safe harbor provisions" of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. Under that law, YouTube would have to have knowledge of acts of copyright infringement committed by its users in order to be held liable for that infringement.

April 17, 2013 - The House of Representatives held a hearing on April 16 in which IP experts testified about how much of an impact non-practicing entities (less charitably known as patent trolls) have on the procedures of the U.S. International Trade Commission (ITC).

April 16, 2013 - The Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) cleared the way to proceed with the creation of a unitary patent system when the court dismissed challenges by Italy and Spain.

The two countries had objected to the creation of the EU unitary patent on the grounds that the legislative process used to create the new patent system was misused and an infringement of EU law.

March 29, 2013 - A federal judge found that Johnson & Johnson infringed three patents belonging to Covidien, a healthcare products provider, and awarded Covidien $176.5 million.

The patents-at-suit cover "ultrasonic cutting and coagulation surgical devices" and were found to be infringed by the Harmonic line of ultrasonic surgery products sold by J&J's Ethicon Endo-Surgery division.