Cover Story The Intellectual Property Strategist

The protection of trade secrets has long been understood to be a legitimate business interest, and, traditionally, companies have used non-competition clauses to protect their trade secrets. Now, with non-competition agreements in doubt and facing greater scrutiny, companies will need to rely on other protection mechanisms.

This article describes certain key developments in the period from passage of the CHIPS Act through the present day, and provides a brief survey of key grantmaking and investment activity by U.S. government agencies since passage of the Act.

The possibilities for patenting innovative applications of multimodal models across industries are endless.

The emerging cases by authors and copyright owners challenging various generative AI programs for using copyrighted materials are certain to create new troubles for the courts being asked to apply the fair use doctrine to this important new technology.

Part One of a Two-Part Article Under the current Alice framework, those attempting to patent AI innovations face an uphill battle. But, as the caselaw demonstrates, inventors and patent drafters can take steps to reduce the risk of AI patent claims being invalidated as abstract ideas.

Perhaps the largest impact that Director Vidal has had upon the PTAB is has been via Director Reviews. The U.S. Supreme Court mandated Director Reviews to correct procedural defects in the way that administrative patent judges are appointed to the PTAB.

The Federal Circuit recently upheld the Patent Office's decision to reject claims in four separate reexamination cases due to obviousness-type double patenting (ODP).

This article explores developments (both positive and negative) in the post-TMA world in which courts have wrestled with implementation of the presumption of irreparable harm in trademark cases.