The Tucson shooting rampage suspect's lawyer says she's unable to provide discovery requested by prosecutors until her client is declared competent to stand trial.

In a Monday filing, defense attorney Judy Clark says the court's finding that Jared Lee Loughner is incompetent to stand trial makes it clear that she "cannot have rational or meaningful communication" with him.

She says she also cannot consult with him about any possible defenses or evidence that may be presented at trial until he is declared competent.

Judge Larry Burns ruled last month that Loughner is mentally unfit to assist his lawyers or understand the charges he faces.

Loughner has pleaded not guilty to charges stemming from the Jan. 8 Tucson mass shooting that killed six and injured 13, including Rep. Gabrielle Giffords.

The former International Monetary Fund head charged with trying to rape a Manhattan hotel maid formally said he was innocent of the charges Monday in his first court appearance in the case in two weeks.

Dominique Strauss-Kahn pleaded not guilty in a strong voice at the brief proceeding, standing between his defense team as his wife, journalist Anne Sinclair, watched.

State Supreme Court Justice Michael Obus went through the formality of telling Strauss-Kahn he needed to appear in court and had a right to be present at his trial, to which the economist said "yes."

The French diplomat appeared in court for the first time since he was released on $6 million in cash bail and bond last month. He has been under house arrest that includes 24-hour monitors and armed guards, first in a downtown Manhattan apartment and now in a deluxe, $50,000-a-month Tribeca town house.

About 50 hotel workers bused in by their union gathered outside the courthouse to jeer Strauss-Kahn, many wearing their work uniforms. They shouted "shame on you" as he arrived, and again as he left in a black sport-utility vehicle.

The Supreme Court says the family of a police chief convicted of extortion doesn't get attorney fees from his victim, another police chief.

The high court ruled Monday for Vinton, La. police chief Ricky Fox, who doesn't want to pay lawyer fees to the family of former chief Billy Ray Vice. Vice was convicted of extortion after threatening to reveal damaging information about Fox unless he dropped out of the police chief's election. Fox won the 2005 election.

Fox later sued Vice, but the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said the lawsuit was frivolous and ordered Fox to pay Vice's attorney fees. A unanimous high court overturned that decision. Vice died last year.

Ownership of a patent for technology to detect HIV levels in patients' blood was correctly split between Stanford University and the pharmaceutical giant Roche, the Supreme Court ruled Monday.

By a 7-2 vote, the high court upheld a lower court's decision making the company and the university co-owners of a patent for technology in HIV test kits.

Stanford asserted it owned the technology because its discoverer worked there. The 1980 Bayh-Dole Act allows universities to retain rights to research funded by federal grants.

But Stanford researcher Mark Holodniy also signed a contract that gave Roche the patent to anything that resulted from their collaboration. The U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit made Roche and Stanford co-owners, and the high court agreed.

"Nowhere in the Act are inventors expressly deprived of their interest in federally funded inventions," said Chief Justice John Roberts, who wrote the majority opinion.

Justices Stephen Breyer and Ruth Bader Ginsberg dissented.

"I cannot so easily accept the majority's conclusion — that the individual inventor can lawfully assign an invention (produced by public funds) to a third party, thereby taking that invention out from under the Bayh-Dole Act's restrictions, conditions and allocation rules," Breyer said.