The University of Wisconsin-Madison's patenting arm has won an appeal in federal court against Canadian drug company Xenon.

The 7th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled Tuesday in favor of the Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation.

The lawsuit dealt with how Xenon handled patent rights to an enzyme that can lower cholesterol levels in the human body.

The appeals court said a lower court correctly ruled in favor of WARF on its claim that Xenon broke its contract for a licensing agreement.

WARF licensed the technology to Xenon in 2001, which then entered into a partnership with Novartis to further develop the discoveries made by the university researchers.

The appeals court says Xenon breached its contract with WARF by not paying its share of sublicense fees.

Doctors at a Long Island hospital failed to properly diagnose a 30-year-old Queens teacher's head pain in the days leading up to her death from a brain hemorrhage, a lawsuit alleges.

Melissa Fudge, who taught at PS 16 in Corona, died a year ago tomorrow. She had a history of ulcerative colitis when she was admitted to Long Island Jewish/Plainview Hospital in November 2008 complaining of vomiting and gastrointestinal pain accompanied by a searing headache and shooting pain in her left eye.

Doctors treated her for colitis, but her head pain continued, said her lawyer, Gerard Lucciola.

"They kept giving her transfusions and couldn't understand where all the blood was going," said her husband, Roger Fudge Jr. "They got tunnel-visioned on the colitis."

And, he said, the tragedy had far-reaching effects.

"It wasn't only me; it was my family, her family — her students, too," he said.

The suit, filed last week in Queens Supreme Court, seeks unspecified damages from the hospital and three doctors.

Microsoft announced on Sept. 18 that it has filed lawsuits against five entities that it claims have been spreading "malvertising," or online advertising used to port malware onto end users' machines. Microsoft is asking the court to shut down those entities, saying that they used Microsoft’s AdManager service, which lets Website owners manage their own advertising inventory, to launch their attacks.

The lawsuits are just the latest leveled by Microsoft against spreaders of malicious code. Earlier in the summer, Microsoft’s Internet Safety Enforcement Team filed a civil lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for Western Washington against what they described as a massive click-fraud scheme. In that case, the accused individuals had developed click-fraud attacks against online advertisements for auto insurance and World of Warcraft.

In 2009, Microsoft also targeted legal action against a party, Funmobile, which it accused of "spimming," or spreading links to possibly malicious software through instant messaging. Hong Kong-based Funmobile had apparently been sending instant messages to thousands of Windows Live Messenger users since March 2009.

The Sept. 18 filings represent yet another front in the battle.

"Our filings in King County Superior Court in Seattle outline how we believe the defendants operated," Tim Cranton, Microsoft’s associate general counsel, wrote in an official Microsoft blog posting on Sept. 1. "In general, malvertising works by camouflaging malicious code as harmless online advertisements. These ads then lead to harmful or deceptive content."

Microsoft’s court filings aim at entities using the business names "Soft Solutions," "Direct Ad," "qiweroqw.com," "ITmeter INC" and "ote2008.info," which Redmond says used malvertising to spread malware and scareware.