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World Business Quick Take

■ IPR protection
Gillette sues Energizer
Gillette Co, the world's largest razor maker, filed a patent infringement lawsuit against Energizer Holdings Inc alleging its new Schick Quattro razor violates Gillette's Mach3 patent. Gillette charges that Energizer used the prop-rietary blade technology of its Mach3 razor, the Boston-based company said in a statement. The lawsuit, filed in Federal District Court in Boston, asked for preliminary and permanent injunctive relief, monetary damages and other relief. The progressive blade geometry used in Mach3 positions the blades to extend gradually closer to the beard, allowing for the closest, most comfortable shave in a single stroke, said Gillette, which gets more than a third of sales and more than half its profit from razors and blades. Energizer's four-blade Quattro will be in stores next month.

■ Macroeconomics
Prices rise in China
China's consumer prices rose 0.5 percent last month compared with the same month a year ago as services and energy became more expensive, the government said yesterday. Services were 2.5 percent more expensive last month than one year earlier, while prices of consumer products were down 0.1 percent from a year earlier, the National Bureau of Statistics said in a release. It marks the seventh consecutive rise in Chinese consumer prices, suggesting that Asia's second largest economy could be escaping from a vicious spiral of falling prices affecting it since the late 1990s. It appeared, however, that some of July's increase in prices was caused by one-off factors or global trends outside the Chinese policy-makers' control.

■ Publishing
`Penthouse' goes bankrupt
General Media Inc, the publisher of Penthouse magazine, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy-court protection so it can restructure debt and operations. General Media is the lead debtor on US$39.9 million in outstanding senior secured notes. That debt totaled US$85 million two years ago when it was restructured. In its bankruptcy petition, filed with US Bankruptcy Court in Manhattan, General Media said it had between US$50 million and US$100 million in both assets and debts. The document wasn't more specific. General Media is 99.5 percent owned by Penthouse International Inc, which didn't file for bankruptcy. Among its obvious troubles, the publishing schedule of its flagship Penthouse magazine has fallen behind. The August issue will hit newsstands Aug. 19, but industry practice is for a particular month's issue to be published before the month listed on the cover.

■ Agriculture
Japan pushes rice-plastics
Japan's agriculture ministry is considering subsidizing projects to use old surplus rice to produce plastics that dissolve into water and carbon dioxide in the soil, an official said yesterday. The ministry official said the idea was not a formal decision yet due to "budgetary and other issues to clarify." The Asahi Shimbun reported the ministry would ask for a total of ?6 billion (US$50 million) over the three years from next April under the state budget for the project to promote the green plastics. Japan's demand for plastics is roughly 14 million tonnes a year, but only about 20,000 tonnes of the total is for bio-degradable types.

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