The Register reveals that “

[t]he European Commission has proposed creating a single strategy for the protection of industrial property rights in Europe. The Commission wants to integrate its strategy for industrial property rights and encourage smaller businesses to protect rights.  Patents and trade marks are the most well-known industrial property rights, but the category also includes protections for industrial designs, geographical indications and plant variety rights.”  As part of the plan, the Commission wants to create a Europe-wide patent system which would unite elements of the European Patent Office, which operates outside of EU government structures, and the Commission’s own cross-border patent proposals.  “‘Europe requires strong industrial property rights to protect its innovations and remain competitive in the global knowledge-based economy,’ said the Communication adopted by the Commission.  ‘In the EU, protection at Community level exists for most of the registered industrial property rights. However, pending an agreement on the Community patent, businesses do not have this possibility in patents … the Commission considers that progress in this matter is vital and reaffirms its intention to seek agreement as a question of priority on these proposals.’”

PCWorld.com reports that “[a]n Wednesday, the European Environmental Agency (EEA) launched with Microsoft a new Web site called ‘Eye on Earth’ that shows the water quality scores of 21,000 bathing sites across Europe on a map, making pollution data widely available for the first time in an easy format. Eye on Earth offers five languages: Portuguese, Italian, Dutch, German and English.  The EEA and Microsoft have agreed to a five-year partnership to develop the site, which will eventually be expanded to show air pollution, biodiversity and national park information.  […]  Oceans, rivers and lakes are increasingly in peril because of pollution caused by human activity. But a broad picture of which spots are good and which aren’t has not been easily accessible, [an EEA spokeswoman] said.”

According to O’Reilly News, “[t]he Mozilla Public License (MPL) is the latest casualty of Google’s decision to remove open-source licenses from its popular code hosting service.  The search giant has said Google Code is no longer accepting projects licensed under MPL, although existing MPL-licensed code is allowed to stay.”

The Guardian writes that “China has reneged on a pledge to provide journalists covering the Beijing Games with unrestricted internet access, Olympic officials have admitted.  Kevan Gosper, a senior member of the International Olympics Committee (IOC) who is overseeing the games, said yesterday that the only uncensored websites journalists at the event would have access to were those related to ‘Olympic competitions.’  The admission contradicts China’s promise to grant the international media ‘complete freedom to report’ at the games, which it made seven years ago when bidding to host the Olympics.”

The BBC has an article today on the collapse of the Doha Round trade negotiations, which have been described by China as a serious setback for the world economy and as “heartbreaking” by the EU.