The Washington-based U.S. Federal Circuit Court of Appeals, a special patent appeals court, reversed the trial court ruling and opened the door for Apotex.

However, Pfizer's ability to sell Norvasc without competition from other companies expired on Sept. 25, 2007.

Liberals fear him. Conservatives distrust him. But all eyes will be on Kennedy as the court opens its 2007-08 term Monday with a string of major cases on the horizon that appear headed for 4-to-4 deadlocks.

Among them is a dispute over gun rights in Washington, D.C., a battle over the legal rights of terror suspects at the Guantánamo detention center, and a challenge to the president's power to order state judges to uphold international court rulings.

In addition, the high court will examine whether execution by lethal injection in Kentucky is a form of cruel and unusual punishment, and whether the Constitution forbids Indiana from requiring voters to produce photo identification prior to casting a ballot.

The same internal dynamics among the justices that produced a string of conservative victories on abortion, affirmative action, and campaign finance last term will again be on full display. But this term, Kennedy's positions on pending cases are less clear.

Some analysts say the highest-profile cases this year are likely to bring a broader mix of both liberal and conservative victories. But several of the cases appear too close to call, court watchers say.

One of the most anticipated cases involves a landmark legal dispute over the meaning of the Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms. The justices are being asked to decide whether this is an individual right that belongs to the people or a collective right bestowed by the states through organized militias.

The court has not yet agreed to take up the issue, but many constitutional scholars believe it soon will. If so, it would mark the first time since 1939 that the Supreme Court has examined the meaning of the Second Amendment.

Two related cases, District of Columbia v. Heller (07-290) and Parker v. District of Columbia (07-335), involve challenges to gun-control laws in the nation's capital. The disputes will take the justices back to the drafting of the Bill of Rights and the foundations of the republic, analysts say.

"This is 1791 for the Second Amendment," Georgetown Law Center Prof. Nicholas Rosenkranz told a recent conference at the Cato Institute in Washington.

Among cases already on the court's docket, one of the most important involves terror suspects at Guantánamo Bay and to what extent they are entitled to challenge their open-ended detention as enemy combatants.

Lawyers for the detainees filed habeas corpus petitions asking federal judges in Washington to examine the legality of their clients' continued confinement. The Bush administration says that because the detainees are foreign enemy combatants being held outside the United States, they are not entitled to the protections of habeas corpus. In 2006 Congress, then controlled by Republicans, passed a law that stripped federal judges of jurisdiction to hear cases brought on behalf of detainees at Guantánamo.

When lawyers for the detainees first asked the Supreme Court to take up the issue, the justices refused. Then, in a highly unusual move, the justices agreed three months later to hear the appeal. This has led to speculation that the court is primed to overturn an earlier federal appeals court ruling upholding the Bush administration's position and the 2006 law.

Some analysts go even further. "The court took this case to make a larger statement of who we are as a people," says Neal Katyal, a law professor at Georgetown Law Center, who also represents a Guantánamo detainee in a pending case.

Professor Katyal, speaking on a recent panel at Georgetown, said the court will probably rule that fundamental rights apply at Guantánamo. "I expect a broader holding than we have had in the past," he added.

Supporters of the Bush administration say the court is unlikely to take such a dramatic step – even six years after the 9/11 attacks. The US is still at war, they say.

One proposal approved 21-17 by the Republican-led Senate would aim to save money by changing how health insurance benefits for teachers and government workers are managed.

The measure, now headed to the Democrat-led House, is key to the overall budget deal because it could be a trade-off to get Republicans to vote for tax increases.

The House passed bills to create incentives for Medicaid recipients to lead healthy lifestyles, among other reforms, which now are headed to the Senate.

Democratic Gov. Jennifer Granholm has told about 35,000 of the state's more than 53,000 workers not to report to work on Monday if a shutdown occurs. The remaining workers, mostly related to public health and safety, would stay on the job.

A partial state shutdown would mean most government operations would cease, including liquor deliveries, lottery ticket sales, the issuance of driver's licenses and construction on state roads.

Republicans have pushed Granholm to accept a temporary budget that would extend the one currently in place, giving legislators more time to craft a long term deal.

Granholm has said she won't sign a temporary budget unless she has assurances higher taxes to pay for education, public health and other programs are part of the deal.

Leaders in both the Democrat-led House and Republican-controlled Senate are optimistic a deal will be reached to avoid a shutdown.

"It's kind of like horse racing. If you're a horse that does well in the last sprint, you wait. But if you wait too long, there's going to be too much distance for you to catch up and you're not going to make it," said Steffen Schmidt, professor of political science at Iowa State University.

While supporters are impressed with Obama's signs of strength - his fund-raising prowess, the huge crowds at rallies, the Internet following - some are getting anxious that he hasn't risen in the polls.

"I am worried that he hasn't done more to close the gap," said a New York lawyer who has donated the maximum $2,300 to Obama's campaign and spoke on condition of anonymity. "It's positive that he hasn't fallen farther behind."

Preeta Bansal, a New York supporter, said she's not concerned.

"It's going to be a long fall. The race is just beginning and he's on fire," said Bansal, referring to recent stump speeches where she said he's been "superb."

New York City Councilman James Sanders, a Queens Democrat who supports Obama, conceded that supporters are "always concerned" and looking for the candidate to shine. But he said there's tremendous excitement for Obama, and real optimism that he can knock out Clinton.

"On the ground, the people, the groundswell is growing," Sanders said.

To overtake Clinton, the Obama campaign plans to drive home the message that the battle comes down to the following question: "Who do people think is most likely to bring about the change we need?"

David Axelrod, a top Obama adviser, said the Illinois senator won't hesitate to draw sharp contrasts with Clinton where contrasts are "germane and real." But don't expect a smackdown any time soon.

"I know there's a rooting interest, a kind of blood lust in the political community to see a kind of steel-cage match between Obama and Hillary," Axelrod said. "I don't think that's either politically smart or consistent with who he is."

The campaign has pinned much of its strategy on winning Iowa. Polls show Obama is in a close three-way race there with Clinton and John Edwards.

The campaign also has begun to deploy staff and build up ground operations in the states holding primaries on Feb. 5. And in the coming months, star supporter Oprah Winfrey "will do some things for us," Axelrod said.

Google is watching you. But you already knew that. Every time you conduct a search using its search engine, Google keeps tabs—and uses the information to send you ads tailored to the interests and tastes suggested by your searches.

Here's something you probably didn't know: The company may let you close the blinds, digitally speaking. Google Chief Executive Eric Schmidt told legislators on Sept. 27 that the company is exploring whether to let users keep Google from tracking the sites they're visiting. To do so, the company would enable Web surfers to shut off so-called cookies, the bits of code used to track the sites visited by individual computers and deliver ads related to those sites. Schmidt outlined that and other steps in an e-mail to Senator Charles Schumer read during a Senate hearing concerning Google's proposed purchase of DoubleClick. Google also is investigating technology that would keep user data collected from different sources from being concentrated in one place, and ways to better notify customers of Google's data-collection practices.

Government Influence

The proposals demonstrate the lengths to which Google may go in exchange for government approval of its planned $3.1 billion acquisition of online ad outfit DoubleClick, which specializes in ad placements across the Web. Senators on the Judiciary Committee also heard from Google opponents, including Microsoft, that would like to see the deal blocked. Marc Rotenberg, executive director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center, told senators that they should not let the deal go forward without rules governing how information can be collected and used, and how long it can be kept.

Senators can't block the deal, but they can influence the thinking of the Federal Trade Commission, which will ultimately decide whether to let it go forward. The most likely scenario is that the FTC will propose restrictions on how Google and DoubleClick can combine the information they collect—if it decides to do anything at all. In July, the FTC approved a similar $6 billion acquisition by Microsoft of aQuantive, a DoubleClick competitor. The government agency also approved Yahoo!'s  $680 million acquisition of the 80% of online ad exchange Right Media that it did not yet own.

An Industry Issue

Opponents say owning DoubleClick will give Google too much control over online advertising, and in particular the user data collected and stored on Google's massive computers. Google counters by saying the whole online advertising industry is in the midst of consolidation. As the number of Web sites where people spend their time has grown, online ad giants have acquired ad networks to expand the number of users they can monitor and the number of sites on which they can place ads. In testimony before the committee, Google Chief Legal Officer David Drummond argued that despite the search leader's success (more than 60% of searches are performed on the company's site and it brings in roughly 75% of all search ad revenue) it's no different from competing online advertising players, particularly Microsoft. "This is an industry issue," said Drummond. "That is how these issues should be worked out, not in the context of one company."

Google said it would welcome global privacy laws governing how Web companies obtain, combine, retain, and use the massive amounts of data collected on the Web surfing and searching habits on individual computers. But it doesn't want those rules to apply solely to its deal with DoubleClick. Through its general counsel, Brad Smith, Microsoft also said it would support privacy legislation.

Pipeline or Choice?

However, Smith and Scott Cleland, president of Precursor, a telecom research and consulting firm, also argued vehemently for rules that would treat Google differently from its main search competitors. According to Smith and Cleland, Google's dominance of search and access to the advertisers and sites that work with DoubleClick would enable the company to become a "pipeline" through which most of the Web's relevant data would flow. The reason, they argued, is that Google's ability to reach the majority of U.S. Web surfers on the most highly trafficked Web sites would be so great that advertisers would be forced to work with the company.

And, with Google's access to advertisers, any publishers not working with Google would also feel they had to work with the company, further increasing Google's reach. As a result, Google would be able to potentially collect Web surfing data on most Internet users, which would also lead to increased advertiser reliance on the company. "In a lot of ways it would be like combining the New York Stock Exchange and the NASDAQ," Microsoft's Smith said. "Somebody could build an alternative exchange, but would anybody go there to take their company public?…this merger is about creating a single pipeline."

Drummond argued that Google—whose main business is selling ads based on search keywords and then displaying those ads on its search pages, as well as the partner sites those same searchers visit—is not in the same business as DoubleClick, which delivers ads that an advertiser and Web publisher have contracted for outside of DoubleClick's site. "There is no pipe," said Drummond. "A user, at a moment's notice, can go use another and they do all the time…there are all kinds of choices."

Whether the government will single out Google at all is an open question. The hearing was the first round of what Senator Herb Kohl  called a "heavyweight fight." In the next round, Google, Microsoft, and others plan to speak about privacy issues before the FTC at a two-day "town hall" meeting, starting Nov. 1.