Intellectual Property

  • January 12, 2026

    Fed. Circ. Preserves Google, Keysight, Instacart Patent Wins

    The Federal Circuit on Monday summarily affirmed decisions from three patent appeals that panels heard at the end of last week, shooting down bids from WSOU Investments LLC, Centripetal Networks LLC and Consumeron LLC.

  • January 12, 2026

    Ex-Google Engineer Stole AI Secrets To Help China, Jury Told

    Driven by greed, ex-Google engineer Linwei Ding stole thousands of confidential documents from the tech giant, launched his own startup and then offered Google's artificial intelligence trade secrets to China, a federal prosecutor told a California jury Monday at the start of Ding's high-profile economic espionage trial.

  • January 12, 2026

    Scented Products TM Row Ends In Trial Lunchtime Settlement

    Luxury scented products company Aroma360 LLC agreed Monday to settle its trademark infringement claims against competitor Scentiment LLC, in a deal negotiated right after the parties finished presenting their opening statements to a jury.

  • January 12, 2026

    Squires Sets More Cases As Precedential And Informative

    U.S. Patent and Trademark Office Director John Squires on Monday declared one new patent review decision, which deals with multiple petitions on the same patent claims, to be precedential, and labeled another decision, which addresses design patents, as informative.

  • January 12, 2026

    Del. Court Blocks Presuit Damages On Agilent Patent

    A Delaware federal court ruled that laboratory equipment company Agilent Technologies couldn't collect damages for any alleged infringement of one of its patents prior to the filing of its intellectual property lawsuit against biotechnology business Axion BioSystems.

  • January 12, 2026

    TTAB Cancels 'Reefer Madness' TM Over Prior Apparel Sales

    The Trademark Trial and Appeal Board has canceled a Colorado cannabis company's "Reefer Madness" registration for use on mugs and apparel, after a challenge from a business that argued it had priority over the mark for merchandise sales following a musical theater production of the same name.

  • January 12, 2026

    Acer Says T-Mobile, AT&T, Verizon Infringe 6 Wireless Patents

    Acer Inc. is going after AT&T, T-Mobile and Verizon in Texas federal court over allegations that the American telecommunications companies are infringing six of the Taiwanese technology giant's patents related to 4G, LTE and 5G wireless standards, while refusing to negotiate licensing terms.

  • January 12, 2026

    American Airlines Can't Dodge Discovery Bid In Patent Suit

    A Texas federal judge has told American Airlines to hand over presuit discovery that could be used to determine whether it owes patent owners any past damages in an infringement suit over in-flight Wi-Fi.

  • January 12, 2026

    Musician Accusing Mellencamp Of Theft Denies Faking Report

    A musician alleging that John Mellencamp's 1996 hit song "Key West Intermezzo (I Saw You First)" stole from his own noncharting track denied to a California federal judge Monday that he wrote a report attributed to his music expert and then failed to make him available for a meaningful deposition.

  • January 12, 2026

    Fastener Co. Wants To Undo Jury Verdict, TM Injunction

    Industrial fastener company Peninsula Components has asked a Pennsylvania federal judge to upend a jury verdict holding it liable for trademark infringement for using the PEM name in Google Ads, arguing that Penn Engineering & Manufacturing Corp., the competitor suing it, did not own the trademark.

  • January 12, 2026

    Judge Tosses Meta Rival's Mobile Streaming Patent Lawsuit

    A Washington federal judge has tossed the remainder of a lawsuit claiming Meta infringed mobile streaming application patents from a competing social media platform and refused to let the patent owner rewrite its complaint again.

  • January 12, 2026

    How AI Is Causing Real Copyright Uncertainty

    As artificial intelligence is used increasingly to generate images, sounds, software and other products, attorneys say they are left navigating an uncertain landscape when it comes to securing copyright protections for AI-assisted outputs, with few signs of clarity on the horizon.

  • January 12, 2026

    Justices Want SG Input On Arthritis Drug Competition Fight

    The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday asked the Trump administration to weigh in on whether state unfair competition claims should be used to block a competitor from selling compounded versions of drugs in certain states.

  • January 12, 2026

    Justices Won't Hear Challenge To Foreign Word TM Rule

    The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday denied a trademark appeal from an apparel company seeking to register "Vetements," the French word for "clothes," in a case that challenged a long-standing doctrine used to determine whether a foreign word can qualify as a mark.

  • January 12, 2026

    Paul Hastings Taps DOJ Alum From Cravath As Litigation Head

    Paul Hastings LLP announced Monday that it is continuing to expand its litigation department with the hire of a former high-ranking U.S. Department of Justice official who most recently chaired Cravath Swaine & Moore LLP's investigations and regulatory enforcement practice, calling him "one of the nation's top litigators."

  • January 09, 2026

    Fed. Circ. Doubts Trade Secret Was Properly Spelled Out

    The Federal Circuit spent part of its Friday morning mulling whether it is the court's job to, in the words of the judge who killed the trade secrets claims brought by a MasterCard unit against two McKinsey consultants, "do APT's job for it by mining its trade secrets from the raw materials."

  • January 09, 2026

    Pegasystems Opt-Out Investors Get Green Light For IP Claims

    A majority of claims brought by Pegasystems Inc. investors who opted out of a $35 million securities class action settlement will proceed after a Massachusetts federal judge found that a Virginia Court of Appeals ruling reversing a trial court's $2 billion intellectual property judgment against Pega doesn't change the viability of the current suit's claims.

  • January 09, 2026

    Goldberg Segalla Fights Ex-IP Co-Chair's $4M Arbitration Bid

    An arbitration fight Goldberg Segalla LLP initiated against a former co-chair of its intellectual property group over proceeds from transferred cases spilled into New York state court, where the firm is seeking relief from his counterclaims that it shorted him nearly $4 million in compensation.

  • January 09, 2026

    Fed. Circ. Wary Of Reviving $200M Google Case Axed Midtrial

    A Federal Circuit panel on Friday appeared skeptical of efforts by Brazos Licensing & Development to overturn a directed verdict decision by U.S. District Judge Alan Albright that cleared Google of infringing a Brazos location tracking patent during a more than $200 million trial.

  • January 09, 2026

    Carbone Owner Sues Pizza Co. For Trademark Infringement

    The owners of the famous Manhattan eatery Carbone filed a trademark infringement suit in New York federal court Friday against Carbone Restaurant Group, which they say are collecting "pre-IPO" investments in a "Fast Fired By Carbone" pizza franchise by misleading the public into believing the two ventures are associated. 

  • January 09, 2026

    Paramount Gets Early Win In 'Top Gun' Dispute

    A Manhattan federal judge Friday tossed a writer's remaining copyright infringement claim that alleged he wasn't credited for writing significant portions of the 2022 film "Top Gun: Maverick" and kept alive Paramount's counterclaims for copyright infringement and fraud, saying the writer's copyright is invalid.

  • January 09, 2026

    Squires Sets Precedent, Guidance On Discretionary Denials

    U.S. Patent and Trademark Office Director John Squires on Friday designated four decisions on discretionary denials at the Patent Trial and Appeal Board precedential and another nine informative.

  • January 09, 2026

    Is 9th Circ.'s Copyright Test Doomed After Kat Von D Verdict?

    Celebrity tattoo artist Kat Von D's realistic tattoo of a famous Miles Davis photo on a friend's arm — and the jury ruling that it did not violate copyright law — could imperil a decades-old Ninth Circuit doctrine for assessing similarity between works, with potential review by a full panel of judges on the horizon.

  • January 09, 2026

    Ramey Ducks BlackBerry's Sanctions Bid Over 'Frivolous' Suit

    Patent attorney Bill Ramey has avoided sanctions requested by BlackBerry Corp. for what the smartphone company called the "frivolous and unreasonable" way he litigated a case brought on behalf of Silent Communications LLC.

  • January 09, 2026

    Hacking Claims Tossed In Cannabis Co.'s Trade Secrets Suit

    Claims that an ex-employee stole confidential trade secrets and took them over to a rival cannabis manufacturer will have to be refiled in state court, a New Jersey federal judge ruled, saying the worker didn't violate federal hacking laws.

Expert Analysis

  • 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.

  • How To Increase 3rd-Party Preissuance Patent Submissions

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    Attorneys Marian Underweiser and Marc Ehrlich, who helped draft the America Invents Act, discuss changes that the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office could potentially implement to facilitate its hopes for increased participation in front-end patent challenges.

  • Anthropic Ruling Creates Fair Use Framework For AI Training

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    A California federal court’s recent ruling that Anthropic’s use of copyrighted books to train its large language model qualified as fair use provides important guidance for both artificial intelligence developers and copyright holders because it distinguishes between transformative uses and unauthorized uses involving pirated or format-shifted works, say attorneys at Ropes & Gray.

  • Series

    Playing Baseball Makes Me A Better Lawyer

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    Playing baseball in college, and now Wiffle ball in a local league, has taught me that teamwork, mental endurance and emotional intelligence are not only important to success in the sport, but also to success as a trial attorney, says Kevan Dorsey at Swift Currie.

  • Assessing Impact Of USPTO's New Patent Policies

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    Recent data shows how the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office's new patent policies are affecting America Invents Act trial institution rates, including spurring an uptick in discretionary denials, say attorneys at Armond Wilson.

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