New USPTO procedures allow patent owners to respond to ex parte requests pre-reexamination. Patent owners should consider strategically leveraging these procedures to prevent their patent claims from being cancelled or narrowed through reexamination.
A current work-for-hire dispute over rights to the musical adaptation, cast album compositions and sheet music based on the children’s horror novel Goosebumps: Phantom of the Auditorium explores the inter-relationship of work-for-hire and copyright-ownership language in agreements signed both before and after the Goosebumps play was created.
The real risk in AI-assisted invention is not the use of AI itself. The risk is that you cannot prove what the human actually invented. If the human contribution cannot be tied to the conception of the claimed subject matter, the patent system has nothing to reward.
A trademark infringement dispute between the outdoor apparel brand Patagonia and the drag queen Pattie Gonia may not make it to a jury after the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California referred the matter to mediation, but experts say there’s still a lot to learn from what the filing has to say about current trends in trademark enforcement.
Federal Circuit Reverses District Court’s Dismissal for Lack of Article III Standing Finding Plaintiffs Possessed a Non-Illusory Exclusionary Right Sufficient for Constitutional StandingFederal Circuit Vacates and Remands Infringement and Damages Judgments Due to Improper Single-Question Verdict Form Covering Multiple Patents, Vacates and Remands on §101 Alice Step Two for Failure to Instruct Jury on the Abstract Idea, and Affirms Patent Eligibility of Two Patents
A current work-for-hire dispute over rights to the musical adaptation, cast album compositions and sheet music based on the children’s horror novel Goosebumps: Phantom of the Auditorium explores the inter-relationship of work-for-hire and copyright-ownership language in agreements signed both before and after the Goosebumps play was created.
If managed with purpose, a patent portfolio can be one of a company’s most valuable strategic assets. Too often, portfolios grow without a clear connection to business objectives, consuming time and money without delivering meaningful value. A thoughtful patent audit helps companies refocus their efforts, reduce waste, and ensure their intellectual property supports long-term growth. Here are practical tips to guide an effective audit.
Lex Machina released earlier this year its 2026 Trade Secret Litigation Report, a retrospective trends report chronicling the rise in federal trade secret litigation, highlighting a subspecialty of civil litigation that is more active, more federalized, and less prone to early resolution than other case types. But beneath those headline findings, additional data points reveal a quieter transformation in how these cases are litigated, valued, and decided.
In November, the USPTO refused Taylor Swift’s application to register The Life of a Showgirl. The mark was confusingly similar, the office wrote, to one already federally registered: “Confessions of a Showgirl,” owned since 2015 by a Las Vegas performer named Maren Wade. Wade had built her brand under that name for 12 years. A column in Las Vegas Weekly, a podcast, a touring cabaret. Swift’s merchandise operation continued anyway.
The United States Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit recently held that a cease-and-desist letter can establish personal jurisdiction, finding that cease-and-desist letters sent to Floridian licensees that went beyond merely informing others of the sender’s intellectual property rights are sufficient to establish the minimum contacts necessary to exercise personal jurisdiction over nonresident defendants.
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