Intellectual Property

  • September 11, 2025

    9th Circ. Revives 'Beauty' FX Copyright Verdict Against Disney

    The Ninth Circuit on Thursday revived a verdict that Walt Disney Pictures vicariously infringed a digital effects company's facial-motion capture software by using it for the 2017 "Beauty and the Beast" film, saying the tech company presented sufficient evidence for jurors to find Disney could have stopped its effects contractor's infringement.

  • September 11, 2025

    Ex-USPTO Solicitor Says Squires Is Better Than No One

    A former U.S. Patent and Trademark Office solicitor is asking the U.S. Senate to confirm John Squires as USPTO director, saying political accountability has become more important than finding a candidate who is right for the job.

  • September 11, 2025

    PTAB To Review Nike Flyknit Patent After Stewart Remand

    The Patent Trial and Appeal Board has agreed to institute review of a patent covering Nike Inc.'s Flyknit line of sneakers, after the acting head of the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office revived Skechers' challenge to the patent.

  • September 11, 2025

    Tesla, Musk And WB Slice Off 'Blade Runner' IP Claims

    A California federal judge tossed several claims Thursday from Alcon Entertainment's lawsuit alleging Tesla, its CEO Elon Musk and Warner Bros. Discovery used an image that infringes "Blade Runner 2049," while chastising the plaintiff for a 96-page complaint he said showcases a "proclivity towards overdoing things."

  • September 11, 2025

    NC Justices Ponder How Much Of Firm Value Atty's Ex Gets

    North Carolina's top court hinted Thursday that a solo attorney's ex-wife may be able to claim at least a morsel of his law firm's worth in their divorce, as the justices pondered whether to draw a distinction between two types of business value known as personal and enterprise goodwill.

  • September 11, 2025

    Under Armour Prevails In PTAB Challenges To 4 Shoe Patents

    The Patent Trial and Appeal Board has invalidated a host of claims across four patents owned by a golf shoe company, handing a win to Under Armour as it fights an infringement suit over the patents in Texas federal court.

  • September 11, 2025

    RSS Co-Creator Unveils License Plan For AI Content Crawlers

    The co-creator of RSS feeds has helped launch a licensing process for AI crawlers that scrape website content to train artificial intelligence systems.

  • September 11, 2025

    Fed. Circ. Lets Ruling On Canada's Cherry Patent Stand

    The Federal Circuit on Thursday declined a request by a group of cherry growers to reinstate a court order that a patent covering the Staccato cherry variety owned by the Canadian government was invalid, saying a district judge had not acted improperly by reversing the order.

  • September 11, 2025

    Zeiss Secures $785K In X-Ray Patent Trial Against Sigray

    Sigray Inc. is on the hook for $785,000 in damages after a finding in California federal court this week that it infringed X-ray imaging patents owned by Carl Zeiss X-Ray Microscopy Inc., but the jury also found that Sigray's infringement was not willful and refused to award any lost profits. 

  • September 11, 2025

    Luminar Must Face Investor Suit Over Image Rip-Off Claims

    Autonomous vehicle technology company Luminar Semiconductor Inc. cannot escape the latest version of a proposed investor class action alleging that it passed off an image of a competitor's technology as its own after a Florida federal judge found that the amended suit now sufficiently pleads that the company made material misrepresentations.

  • September 11, 2025

    IYO Loses Sanctions Bid In OpenAI Trademark Case

    Technology firm IYO Inc. was denied a request to sanction OpenAI by a California federal judge who said IYO had not convincingly backed up its claim that OpenAI reposted materials touting products under the "IO" brand in violation of a court order.

  • September 11, 2025

    Fed. Circ. Keeps Google, Amazon Patent Fights In Calif.

    The Federal Circuit on Thursday refused to send back to Texas federal court a pair of suits from a software company accusing Google and Amazon of patent infringement, refusing to undo findings that California was the better venue.

  • September 10, 2025

    Britannica, Merriam-Webster Sue Perplexity Over Content Use

    Encyclopedia Britannica Inc. and Merriam-Webster Inc. on Wednesday sued Perplexity AI Inc. in New York federal court, alleging that the artificial intelligence-powered search engine startup was engaging in "massive copying" of their copyright-protected content and spitting out verbatim reproductions of their content without permission.

  • September 10, 2025

    Fed. Circ. Won't Revisit Double-Patenting, Soda TM Appeals

    The Federal Circuit on Wednesday declined to revisit its decisions in a trio of intellectual property cases, including one where it upheld an Acadia Pharmaceuticals Parkinson's disease drug patent and addressed double-patenting, and another deeming "Kist" and "Sunkist" soft drink marks confusingly similar.

  • September 10, 2025

    Sonos Seeks Exit In $3M Royalties Suit By SoundExchange

    Sonos says it shouldn't have to face a suit claiming it and Napster failed to pay more than $3.4 million in royalties, interest and other costs related to the operation of Sonos Radio, saying it never had the responsibility of having to pay any royalties.

  • September 10, 2025

    Disney Says Forged Doc Aids $532K 'Moana' Sanctions Bid

    An attorney for Disney on Wednesday urged a California federal judge to issue $532,815 in sanctions against attorneys representing an animator who unsuccessfully alleged "Moana" lifted from his Polynesian adventure story, saying the lawyers knew or should have known a key document in the case is a forgery.

  • September 10, 2025

    Plaintiffs Seek Info From Microsoft, OpenAI In Copyright MDL

    A proposed class of authors suing over the alleged use of works to train ChatGPT has asked a Manhattan federal judge to force Microsoft to hand over documents they said could be a "smoking gun of copyright infringement," while a group of news organizations said OpenAI should turn over materials on low-quality, artificial intelligence-generated news sites. 

  • September 10, 2025

    Meet The Attys Now Fighting Judge Newman's Suspension

    Federal Circuit Judge Pauline Newman's main attorney in the fight against her suspension from the appeals court has departed from the New Civil Liberties Alliance, leaving his former colleagues to head the litigation.

  • September 10, 2025

    Broadcom Urges Fed. Circ. To Undo Netflix's Patent Wins

    Broadcom has told the Federal Circuit that a California federal judge wrongly invalidated two data patents it asserted against Netflix, saying the judge erred in finding that the patents cover steps that could be carried out by a traffic cop or a 19th century switchboard operator.

  • September 10, 2025

    Vehicle Cosmetics Co. Sues Over AI-Voice Suit Threats

    A manufacturer of vehicle wax and wash products has sued a voice actor in Texas federal court, seeking a declaration that he doesn't have a claim for misappropriating his likeness, saying a rogue employee created an artificial intelligence-generated version of his voice and that no revenues were derived from it.

  • September 10, 2025

    DC Circ. Temporarily Reinstates Copyright Head After Firing

    The fired head of the U.S. Copyright Office has regained her position for the time being after a split D.C. Circuit faulted a lower court's analysis of whether she would be harmed if she didn't get her job back while fighting the Trump administration's dismissal of her.

  • September 10, 2025

    Tech M&A Pro Joins Baker McKenzie In Silicon Valley

    Baker McKenzie is strengthening its transactional team, bringing in a technology mergers and acquisitions expert, most recently with Tech Law Partners LLP, as a partner in its Palo Alto, California, office.

  • September 09, 2025

    Conservative Groups Warn Against Value-Based 'Patent Tax'

    More than three dozen conservative groups Tuesday urged the U.S. Department of Commerce to refrain from considering charging patent owners a novel "patent tax" based on the value of their patents, warning that such a levy would harm innovation in the U.S., especially for emerging technologies.

  • September 09, 2025

    2nd Circ. Won't Nix Vimeo IP Loss But Clears Path For Appeal

    The Second Circuit Tuesday mostly rejected Capitol Records' bid to revisit its loss to Vimeo over lip-dub videos set to copyrighted songs, removing a footnote that could've blocked an appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court, but leaving intact their finding that the record labels waived a key liability theory.

  • September 09, 2025

    CVS Says Takeda Tried To Block Heartburn Drug Competition

    Drugmaker Takeda Pharmaceutical Co. Ltd. and other entities engaged in a "horizontal conspiracy and agreement" to restrain competition in the U.S. market for the acid reflux drug Dexilant and its generic equivalents, CVS Pharmacy Inc. alleged in a complaint filed in California federal court Tuesday.

Expert Analysis

  • 2nd Circ. Reinforces Consensus On Vacating Foreign Awards

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    In Molecular Dynamics v. Spectrum Dynamics Medical, the Second Circuit recently affirmed that federal district courts do not possess subject matter jurisdiction to vacate foreign arbitral awards, strengthening this consensus across the circuits most active in recognition and enforcement actions, says Ed Mullins at Reed Smith.

  • E-Discovery Quarterly: Rulings On Relevance Redactions

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    In recent cases addressing redactions that parties sought to apply based on the relevance of information — as opposed to considerations of privilege — courts have generally limited a party’s ability to withhold nonresponsive or irrelevant material, providing a few lessons for discovery strategy, say attorneys at Sidley.

  • Opinion

    Section 1983 Has Promise After End Of Nationwide Injunctions

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    After the U.S. Supreme Court recently struck down the practice of nationwide injunctions in Trump v. Casa, Section 1983 civil rights suits can provide a better pathway to hold the government accountable — but this will require reforms to qualified immunity, says Marc Levin at the Council on Criminal Justice.

  • Patent Ambiguity Persists After Justices Nix Eligibility Appeal

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    The Supreme Court recently declined to revisit the contentious framework governing patent eligibility by denying certiorari in Audio Evolution Diagnostics v. U.S., suggesting a necessary recalibration of both patent application and litigation strategies, say attorneys at Skadden.

  • What To Know About NCAA Deal's Arbitration Provisions

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    Kathryn Hester at Jones Walker discusses the key dispute resolution provisions of the NCAA's recently approved class action settlement that allows for complex revenue sharing with college athletes, breaking down the arbitration stipulations and explaining how the Northern District of California will handle certain enforcement, administration, implementation and interpretation disputes.

  • Fed. Circ. In June: Transitional Phrases In Patent Claims

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    The Federal Circuit's recent decision in Eye Therapies v. Slayback Pharma takes on the rarely addressed topic of transitional phrases in patent claims, providing some useful lessons regarding restating claim language and broadly distinguishing prior art, say attorneys at Knobbe Martens.

  • Series

    Playing Soccer Makes Me A Better Lawyer

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    Soccer has become a key contributor to how I approach my work, and the lessons I’ve learned on the pitch about leadership, adaptability, resilience and communication make me better at what I do every day in my legal career, says Whitney O’Byrne at MoFo.

  • Expect Unprecedented Delays In USPTO Patent Examination

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    With data from the first half of this year indicating that the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office is on pace to have a record backlog of unexamined patent applications at the end of the fiscal year, applicants and patent prosecutors should consider strategies to mitigate delays, say Matt Kamps and Emily Miller at Husch Blackwell.

  • And Now A Word From The Panel: Back In Action

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    A lack of new petitions at the May hearing session of the Judicial Panel on Multidistrict Litigation caught many observers' attention — but a rapid uptick in petitions scheduled to be heard at this week's session illustrates how panel activity always ebbs and flows, says Alan Rothman at Sidley.

  • Series

    Law School's Missed Lessons: Learning From Failure

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    While law school often focuses on the importance of precision, correctness and perfection, mistakes are inevitable in real-world practice — but failure is not the opposite of progress, and real talent comes from the ability to recover, rethink and reshape, says Brooke Pauley at Tucker Ellis.

  • Eye Drop Ruling Clarifies Importance Of Patent Phrasing

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    The Federal Circuit's recent ruling in Eye Therapies v. Slayback, rejecting the Patent Trial and Appeal Board's interpretation of "consisting essentially of," highlights the importance of using clear and consistent terms throughout a patent's filing history to shield it against future challenges, says Liliana Di Nola-Baron at Panitch Schwarze.

  • How Courts Are Addressing The Use Of AI In Discovery

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    In recent months, several courts have issued opinions on handling discovery issues involving artificial intelligence, which collectively offer useful insights on integrating AI into discovery and protecting work product in connection with AI prompts and outputs, says Philip Favro at Favro Law.

  • AI Infrastructure Growth Brings Unique IP Considerations

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    The explosive rise of artificial intelligence has triggered an equally dramatic transformation in the supporting infrastructure required to meet growing AI demand, and the technology used in these data centers has its own intellectual property considerations to navigate, says Vincent Allen at Carstens Allen.

  • Series

    Adapting To Private Practice: From ATF Director To BigLaw

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    As a two-time boomerang partner, returning to BigLaw after stints as a U.S. attorney and the director of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, people ask me how I know when to move on, but there’s no single answer — just clearly set your priorities, says Steven Dettelbach at BakerHostetler.

  • IPR Decisions Clarify Stewart's 'Settled Expectations' Factor

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    Recent discretionary denial decisions from U.S. Patent and Trademark Office acting Director Coke Morgan Stewart have begun to illuminate the contours of her "settled expectations" doctrine, informing when it might be worth petitioning for inter partes review if the patent at issue has been in force for a few years, say attorneys at Morgan Lewis.

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