Case study : Faber-Castell Australia defends its intellectual property

This case study explores the significance of intellectual property in today's business environment by examining successful legal actions taken by Faber-Castell Australia to defend its best-selling product, the Connector Pen, from explicit copies. Faber-Castell AG is a multinational enterprise specializing in writing and art materials with its head office in Germany. Faber-Castell is a competency based business specializing in writing and art materials. The Connector Pen is essentially a children's color marker. What is particularly unique about this product is its untraditional cap design which consists of the cap with a partial cylinder attached. The original intention of this feature was safety -- not only is the cap extremely difficult to swallow due to its rather bulky size, but if it is swallowed and becomes lodged in a child's throat, the cylindrical attachment allows air to pass so the child will not choke

Interferon-γ-induced p27KIP1 binds to and targets MYC for proteasome-mediated degradation

The Myc oncoprotein is tightly regulated at multiple levels including ubiquitin-mediated protein turnover. We recently demonstrated that inhibition of Cdk2-mediated phosphorylation of Myc at Ser-62 pharmacologically or through interferon (IFN)-γ-induced expression of p27Kip1 (p27) repressed Myc's activity to suppress cellular senescence and differentiation. In this study we identified an additional activity of p27 to interfere with Myc independent of Ser-62 phosphorylation. p27 is required and sufficient for IFN-γ-induced turnover of Myc. p27 interacted with Myc in the nucleus involving the C-termini of the two proteins, including Myc box 4 of Myc. The C-terminus but not the Cdk2 binding fragment of p27 was sufficient for inducing Myc degradation. Protein expression data of The Cancer Genome Atlas breast invasive carcinoma set revealed significantly lower Myc protein levels in tumors with highly expressed p27 lacking phosphorylation at Thr-157 - a marker for active p27 localized in the nucleus. Further, these conditions correlated with favorable tumor stage and patient outcome. This novel regulation of Myc by IFN-γ/p27KIP1 potentially offers new possibilities for therapeutic intervention in tumors with deregulated Myc