Intellectual Property

  • February 18, 2026

    Will Jurors Penalize AI? Study Examines Trade Secrets Impact

    A forthcoming academic study suggests juries may treat AI-enabled actions more harshly than human conduct in trade secrets disputes, resulting in what the authors call an “AI penalty.” Attorneys say reality is more complicated.

  • February 18, 2026

    Judge Won't Let Slacker CEO Out Of Sony's Royalties Suit

    A New York federal judge has declined to let the CEO of music streaming companies Slacker and LiveOne out of a suit brought by Sony Music Entertainment over allegations of unpaid royalties, saying that while some of Sony's claims are a bit general, they are good enough at this stage of the case.

  • February 18, 2026

    PTAB Axes Showerhead Patent After Squires-Ordered Do-Over

    A split Patent Trial and Appeal Board on Wednesday found that all of the claims in a Delta Faucet patent for a light on a showerhead were invalid, after the head of the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office told the board to take another look at Kohler's challenge to the patent.

  • February 18, 2026

    Ericsson Asks Court To Preempt Acer Suits Over 4G, 5G Patents

    Ericsson Inc. is asking a Delaware federal court for a ruling that it hasn't infringed six patents owned by Acer Inc. covering 4G, LTE and 5G wireless standards, filing its suit shortly after Acer went after Ericsson customers in a separate action.

  • February 18, 2026

    USPTO Making Moves To Handle Surge In Reexam Requests

    The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office has seen a sizable increase in requests for ex parte reexaminations of patents and has launched efforts to effectively manage them, and placed conditions on anonymous requests, officials said Wednesday.

  • February 18, 2026

    Senators Push For Transparency In Litigation Funding

    Lawmakers are trying again to rein in third-party litigation financing, a multibillion-dollar industry that critics argue allows foreign entities to assert control of the U.S. legal system.

  • February 18, 2026

    Texas A&M Employee Dodges '12th Man' Copyright Suit

    A Texas federal judge has dismissed copyright infringement claims against a Texas A&M University athletics communications employee who was accused of posting part of a book online related to the school's "12th Man" tradition, saying he's immune from such claims as an employee of the state.

  • February 18, 2026

    9th Circ. Affirms Tracy Anderson's Workout Copyright Loss

    The Ninth Circuit on Tuesday affirmed a ruling that invalidated copyrights to celebrity fitness trainer Tracy Anderson's "Tracy Anderson Method" workout routines in 19 DVDs, finding that the routines are unprotectable methods designed to improve health, similar to yoga poses at issue in the Ninth Circuit's Bikram ruling.

  • February 18, 2026

    Fed. Circ. Backs More Samsung PTAB Wins Over Audio Tech

    The Federal Circuit on Wednesday backed most of the Patent Trial and Appeal Board's decisions to invalidate claims in a duo of earpiece technology patents challenged by Samsung, though it agreed to revive two claims the electronics giant didn't ask the board to ax.

  • February 18, 2026

    Texas Co. Accuses Asian Firms Of Memory Tech Infringement

    A Japanese company and a South Korean company are importing memory chips into the U.S. that infringe on eight patents held by a Texas-based technology research firm, the firm told the U.S. International Trade Commission in a complaint.

  • February 18, 2026

    Morgan Lewis Adds Fenwick Litigator Duo In LA, Seattle

    Morgan Lewis & Bockius LLP continues boosting its West Coast litigation team, announcing Wednesday it is bringing in a pair of Fenwick & West LLP trial attorneys as partners in its Los Angeles and Seattle offices.

  • February 17, 2026

    Trade Secrets Expert Defends Patent Review In $1M Tech Row

    Counsel for an audio-video network transmission company on Tuesday pressed an aerospace manufacturer's trade secrets expert on why he reviewed only select portions of a disputed AVoIP patent, setting up the first of a three-day bench trial over a soured $1 million technology deal.

  • February 17, 2026

    Judge Trims Moderna's Defenses In COVID Patent Suit

    A federal judge sitting in Delaware on Tuesday ruled that Moderna could not use obviousness to defend itself from patent claims brought by a rival vaccine developer since it already used that as a defense in related Patent Trial and Review Board proceedings, saying that Moderna had offered expert opinions to support a defense that the patents don't sufficiently teach about the claimed invention.

  • February 17, 2026

    Betting Tech Rivals Settle Antitrust, Patent Row

    Sports technology company Panda Interactive has settled its patent dispute with its rival Sportradar and asked a Texas federal judge to stay all activity in the case for 30 days while the parties finalize the agreement.

  • February 17, 2026

    Flat Fee Or Contingency? Firm, Ex-Client Fight Over IP Spoils

    A 3D printing technology company has urged a Washington federal court to toss a breach of contract lawsuit brought by its former law firm, Lee & Hayes PC, arguing it agreed to a flat fee ahead of a patent settlement, while Lee & Hayes accused its former client of "underhanded misrepresentations" and denied waiving its contingency fee arrangement.

  • February 17, 2026

    Fed. Circ. Greenlights $71M Christmas Tree Patent Verdict

    The Federal Circuit on Tuesday affirmed a $71.4 million judgment against Polygroup Ltd. for infringing rival Willis Electric Co. Ltd.'s artificial prelit Christmas tree patent, rejecting Polygroup's arguments that the patent was invalid and Willis' damages expert should have been excluded.

  • February 17, 2026

    Post U May Be Owed Billions In IP Damages, Jury Told

    The company behind academic file sharing website Course Hero could owe Post University billions of dollars in damages for infringing the copyrights of nearly 2,200 learning documents, a federal jury in Hartford, Connecticut, heard Tuesday during opening statements in a trial five years in the making.

  • February 17, 2026

    CoStar Rival Urges High Court To Reject Antitrust Appeal

    A rival accusing CoStar of blocking competition for commercial real estate listing services is urging the U.S. Supreme Court not to review a ruling that revived the rival's counterclaims, saying that CoStar just disagrees with how the appeals court viewed the allegations.

  • February 17, 2026

    OpenAI's Video App Can't Use 'Cameo' As TM Case Proceeds

    A California federal judge issued a preliminary injunction blocking OpenAI from using the word "Cameo" to refer to a component of its Sora AI video generator app in litigation brought by a personalized video provider of the same name, which argued that its consumer reputation was threatened by the artificial intelligence company.

  • February 17, 2026

    Valve Jury Says Rothschild, Atty Broke Anti-Patent Troll Law

    Inventor Leigh Rothschild, his companies and his former attorney broke Washington state's anti-patent trolling law by making a bad faith assertion of patent infringement against video game developer Valve Corp., and Rothschild and his companies breached an intellectual property licensing deal in the process, a Seattle federal jury found on Tuesday. 

  • February 17, 2026

    Squires Ends IPR After ITC Judge Rejects Validity Challenge

    U.S. Patent and Trademark Office Director John Squires ended a Patent Trial and Appeal Board review of a Hydrafacial LLC skin treatment patent since the same issue had already been adjudicated in the U.S. International Trade Commission.

  • February 17, 2026

    Funkadelic Member's Estate Beats Clinton's Sanctions Bid

    A Michigan federal judge denied Parliament-Funkadelic bandleader George Clinton's bid to sanction the estate of the band's former keyboardist in their royalty dispute over works recorded before 1976, ruling Tuesday that there's no evidence of bad faith by the estate to pursue its claims, even if they were untimely.

  • February 17, 2026

    Fox's $5.8M IP Win Unaffected By New Email Service Ruling

    A recent Second Circuit decision barring email process service will not disturb a New York federal court's $5.8 million award to Fox Corp. in its feud with Mexican media companies after the judge on Tuesday drew key distinctions between the cases.

  • February 17, 2026

    Full Fed. Circ. Won't Review Car Seat Patent Case

    The full Federal Circuit has declined to hear arguments from Wonderland Switzerland AG that it should undo a panel's reversal of part of a ruling that Evenflo Co. infringed a patent covering car seats.

  • February 17, 2026

    Intellectual Property Group Of The Year: Williams & Connolly

    Williams & Connolly LLP held onto the first contested injunction in Biologics Price Competition and Innovation Act history and defended Pfizer's COVID-19 products against infringement claims, earning the firm a place among the 2025 Law360 Intellectual Property Groups of the Year.

Expert Analysis

  • IP Ownership Risk Grows In Booming Cancer Drug Market

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    The ownership of intellectual property has become strategically decisive in deals involving valuable cancer therapeutics known as ADCs, as highlighted by the recent Takeda-Innovent deal, with the commercial value of a license resting on the integrity and defensibility of the underlying technology, say attorneys at Loeb & Loeb.

  • Series

    My Miniature Livestock Farm Makes Me A Better Lawyer

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    Raising miniature livestock on my farm, where I am fully present with the animals, is an almost meditative time that allows me to return to work invigorated, ready to juggle numerous responsibilities and motivated to tackle hard issues in new ways, says Ted Kobus at BakerHostetler.

  • The Future Of Gen AI Training Amid Reddit Data Scraping Suit

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    Reddit's lawsuit against Perplexity AI is not framed as a classic copyright infringement fight, demonstrating that even when companies avoid fair use claims, the path by which training data is obtained is legally consequential, say attorneys at Troutman Pepper.

  • Litigation Funding Could Create Ethics Issues For Attorneys

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    A litigation investor’s recent complaint claiming a New York mass torts lawyer effectively ran a Ponzi scheme illustrates how litigation funding arrangements can subject attorneys to legal ethics dilemmas and potential liability, so engagement letters must have very clear terms, says Matthew Feinberg at Goldberg Segalla.

  • E-Discovery Quarterly: Recent Rulings On Dynamic Databases

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    Several recent federal court decisions illustrate how parties continue to grapple with the discovery of data in dynamic databases, so counsel involved in these disputes must consider how structured data should be produced consistent with the requirements of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, say attorneys at Sidley.

  • Questions To Ask Inventors Before Drafting AI Patents

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    Practitioners should use interview questions tailored to help inventors articulate the patentable aspects of their artificial intelligence and machine learning innovations, as this can elicit information needed for a patent application to forestall indefiniteness, abstract-idea and enablement challenges, say attorneys at Marshall Gerstein.

  • ITC Ruling Highlights Conflicts Hurdles For Law Firms

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    As supply chains become more interconnected, a recent U.S. International Trade Commission order — disqualifying a complainant's law firm for concurrently representing a third-party supplier relevant to the case — underscores the reality that conflicts may increasingly lurk within the building blocks of devices, says Matt Rizzolo at Ropes & Gray.

  • Revisiting Jury Trial Right May Upend State Regulatory Power

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    Justice Neil Gorsuch’s recent use of a denial of certiorari to call for the U.S. Supreme Court to revisit whether the Seventh Amendment jury trial right extends to states, building off last year's Jarkesy ruling, could foretell a profound change in state regulators' ability to enforce penalties against regulated companies, say attorneys at Sidley.

  • Series

    Building With Lego Makes Me A Better Lawyer

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    Building with Lego has taught me to follow directions and adapt to unexpected challenges, and in pairing discipline with imagination, allows me to stay grounded while finding new ways to make complex deals come together, says Paul Levin at Venable.

  • The Rise Of Trade Secret Specificity As A Jury Question

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    Recent federal appellate court decisions have clarified that determining sufficient particularity under the Defend Trade Secrets Act is a question of fact and will likely become a standard jury question, highlighting the need for appropriate jury instructions that explicitly address the issue, says Amy Candido at Simpson Thacher.

  • Series

    Law School's Missed Lessons: Networking 101

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    Cultivating a network isn't part of the law school curriculum, but learning the soft skills needed to do so may be the key to establishing a solid professional reputation, nurturing client relationships and building business, says Sharon Crane at Practising Law Institute.

  • Defeating Estoppel-Based Claims In Legal Malpractice Actions

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    State supreme court cases from recent years have addressed whether positions taken by attorneys in an underlying lawsuit can be used against them in a subsequent legal malpractice action, providing a foundation to defeat ex-clients’ estoppel claims, says Christopher Blazejewski at Sherin and Lodgen.

  • Trade Secret Rulings Reveal The Cost Of Poor Preparation

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    Two recent federal appellate decisions show that companies must be prepared to prove their trade secrets with specificity, highlighting how an asset management program that identifies key confidential information before litigation arises can provide the clarity and documentation that courts increasingly require, say attorneys at Mintz.

  • Series

    The Biz Court Digest: How It Works In Massachusetts

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    Since its founding in 2000, the Massachusetts Business Litigation Session's expertise, procedural flexibility and litigant-friendly case management practices have contributed to the development of a robust body of commercial jurisprudence, say James Donnelly at Mirick O’Connell, Felicia Ellsworth at WilmerHale and Lisa Wood at Foley Hoag.

  • Weighing Risks Of Ambush Marketing Around Sports Events

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    American brands tempted to insert themselves into conversations around the 2026 World Cup and 2028 Olympic Games, but without the coveted sponsorship, should consider the legal hazards and minimize the risks by avoiding elements that imply an unauthorized commercial association with FIFA or the International Olympic Committee, say attorneys at Debevoise.

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