Other Barks & Bites for Friday, January 30: Senator Cantwell Criticizes Cuts to Federal R&D Funding; Kalyan Deshpande Named Chief Judge of PTAB

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This week in Other Barks & Bites: the Federal Circuit denies yet another mandamus petition seeking relief from the settled expectations doctrine for discretionary IPR denials at the PTAB; Europe’s top IP agencies release a joint report showing that IP-driven industries contribute half of Europe’s GDP and account for one out of three jobs in the EU; a report by a coalition of creators organizations warns that generative AI threatens one out of every three jobs in the creative industries; Senator Maria Cantwell urges the Trump Administration to restore federal funding levels for the nation’s top science and research agencies; Apple announces record-breaking quarterly revenues on iPhone sales; Kalyan Deshpande moves from his interim role at the PTAB to a permanent Chief Judge position; and the Supreme Court grants a petition for cert asking about the scope of consumer data privacy protections under U.S. law preventing companies offering subscriptions to online content from sharing data on content accessed with third parties.

Bites 

EUIPO-EPO Joint Study Shows IP-Driven Industries Create Half of EU’s GDP – On Thursday, January 29, a study into intellectual property-driven industries released jointly by the European Union Intellectual Property Office (EUIPO) and the European Patent Office (EPO) showed that industries making intensive use of IP rights account for 47.9% of the gross domestic product (GDP) created within the European Union, with trademark intensive industries accounting for the largest share of GDP contributions. The joint study also concluded that those industries employ more than 65 million people, nearly one out of every three jobs currently active in the EU that offer a 40.9% wage premium over average wages across the EU.

CAFC Agrees That “Requested” Media Object Step Must Be Performed After Request – On Thursday, January 29, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit issued a precedential ruling in Sound View Innovations, LLC v. Hulu, LLC affirming a summary judgment ruling by the Central District of California finding that Hulu did not infringe upon Sound View’s patent claims directed to methods of streaming multimedia information over public networks. The Federal Circuit agreed with the district court that steps of an asserted method claim must be performed in a specific sequence, reasoning that the allocated buffer for caching a “requested SM (streaming media) object” must occur after “receiving a request for [the] SM object” because the use of the term “requested” serves as a status indicator reflecting completion of the receipt of a request to cache an SM object.

Senator Cantwell Criticizes Trump Administration at CSIS for Cuts to Federal R&D Funding – On Thursday, January 29, Senator Maria Cantwell (D-WA) made comments at a public event at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) highly critical of the Trump Administration for its decisions to reduce federal funding for research and development activities coordinated by the National Science Foundation (NSF) and National Institute for Standards and Technology (NIST) as well as impacts to American research institutions through Trump’s tariff policies. Cantwell urged that these issues were hampering America’s ability to compete with foreign economic rival China and limiting the impacts of federal funding being handed out under the CHIPS and Science Act.

CAFC Denies Another Mandamus Petition Challenging PTAB’s Settled Expectations Doctrine – On Tuesday, January 27, the Federal Circuit issued an order denying a petition for mandamus relief filed by Internet services giant Google asking the appellate court to direct the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office to vacate decisions denying Google’s petitions for inter partes review (IPR) and reconsider those IPR petitions without considering the patent owner’s settled expectations in their IP rights. The ruling represents yet another denial by the Federal Circuit of challenges to the settled expectations doctrine being developed at the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB), under which the PTAB may discretionarily deny a petition for IPR proceedings if the patent has been in force for a period of typically six years or longer.

Kalyan Deshpande Moves into Permanent Chief Judge Role at the PTAB – On Tuesday, January 27, news reports indicated that U.S. Patent and Trademark Director John Squires had sent an email to agency staff informing them that Kalyan Deshpande will serve as the Chief Judge of the PTAB. Deshpande moves into this permanent role having most recently served as the PTAB’s Acting Chief Judge and has taken a notable leadership role in recent months, including taking authority from then-Acting USPTO Director Coke Morgan Stewart last August on requests for discretionary denial of IPR proceedings, entering decisions notable for denying IPR institution for timing considerations despite the young age of the patents in question.

SCOTUS to Consider Scope of Consumer Protections Under VPPA – On Monday, January 26, the U.S. Supreme Court issued an order list granting certiorari to a petition for writ filed by Michael Salazar challenging the Sixth Circuit’s ruling last April upholding that Salazar’s subscription to a 247Sports e-newsletter did not qualify him as a “consumer” under the terms of the Video Privacy Protection Act (VPPA) because he did not subscribe to audio-visual content. The decision to grant cert indicates that the Supreme Court could expand the scope of consumer protections under the VPPA, which imposes penalties on “video tape service providers” disclosing personal information identifying their consumers.

Barks

Report by Creators Coalition Says Gen AI Threatens One in Three Creative Jobs – On Friday, January 30, a coalition of five organizations representing musicians, authors and other creators released a joint report on the impacts of generative artificial intelligence (AI) on the creative industries, concluding that one out of every three creative industry jobs is at risk due to generative AI and finding that 99% of creators report having their work scraped for training AI models without their consent.

MITRE Corporation Announces 14 Patents Included in DOW’s Defense Patent Holiday Program – On Thursday, January 29, not-for-profit defense R&D organization MITRE Corporation announced that fourteen patents covering technologies developed by MITRE, including urban aviation transportation and mitigating impacts on power infrastructure, are now available for two-year royalty-free commercial evaluation licenses through the U.S. Department of War’s Defense Patent Holiday program.

Ninth Circuit Affirms Denial of Preliminary Injunction in Copyright Case Against CBS Studios – On Wednesday, January 28, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit issued a ruling in Dillard v. CBS Studios, Inc. affirming the Central District of California’s decision to deny a motion for preliminary injunction filed by plaintiff Meriland Dillard after finding that Dillard had not established a likelihood of success for his copyright infringement claims filed against CBS Studios.

Major Music Publishers Sue Anthropic for $3 Billion in Statutory Damages – On Wednesday, January 28, a collection of major music publishing firms including Universal Music, Capitol, Concord and ABKCO filed a lawsuit against American generative AI firm Anthropic in the Northern District of California seeking more than $3 billion in statutory damages under the Copyright Act for the unauthorized use of more than 20,000 songs to train its AI models.

Fourth Circuit Affirms Ruling That Allegations Over Astrophysics Patents are Implausible – On Wednesday, January 28, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit issued a ruling in Presidential Candidate P60005535 v. U.S. Patent and Trademark Office affirming the Western District of Virginia’s finding that plaintiff Ronald Satish Emrit failed to state a plausible claim that the USPTO and several federal agencies interfered with his ability to obtain patent claims to several technologies claiming the use of black holes, white holes and wormholes.

Apple Sued for Baiting London Software Developer to Copy Video Call Technology – On Tuesday, January 27, UK-based software developer Reincubate filed a lawsuit in the District of New Jersey against American consumer electronics giant Apple alleging violations of U.S. antitrust law over Apple’s baiting Reincubate to release video app Camo on its platform before copying patented features and incorporating those into Apple’s own Continuity Camera app.

This Week on Wall Street

Apple Earns Record-Breaking iPhone Revenues in Q1 2026 – On Thursday, January 29, American consumer technology giant Apple reported earnings for the first quarter of 2026, earning revenues of $143.8 billion and beating analyst expectations thanks to strong iPhone sales, which reached a record $85.3 billion during the recently concluded quarter compared to $78.3 billion in sales forecasted by analysts.

Quarterly Earnings – The following firms identified among the IPO’s Top 300 Patent Recipients for 2024 are announcing quarterly earnings next week (2023 rank in parentheses):

• Monday: ASML Holding NV (t-194th); AT&T Inc. (107th); Corning Inc. (86th); Danaher Corp. (156th); Meta Platforms, Inc. (95th); Microsoft Corp. (18th); Realtek Semiconductor Corp. (t-172nd); Textron Inc. (t-200th); United Microelectronics Corp. (153rd); AB Volvo (t-114th); Whirlpool Corp. (t-176th)
• Tuesday: Corteva, Inc. (224th); Eaton Corp. (t-183rd); Emerson Electric Co. (t-238th); Mitsubishi Electric Corp. (36th); Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, Ltd. (123rd); Seiko Epson Corp. (38th); Skyworks Solutions, Inc. (180th); Sonos, Inc. (t-211th); Sumitomo Electric Industries (t-60th)
• Wednesday: Align Technology, Inc. (t-263rd); Alphabet Inc. (8th); Boston Scientific Corp. (t-69th); Daikin Industries, Ltd. (136th); Infineon Technologies AG (65th); Johnson Controls International (118th); MediaTek Inc. (121st); Mitsubishi Chemical Holdings Corp. (t-242nd); Panasonic Corp. (19th); Qualcomm Inc. (4th); Snap Inc. (51st); Stanley Black & Decker, Inc. (t-285th)
• Thursday:com, Inc. (20th); Bristol Myers Squibb Co. (t-295th); Fujifilm Holdings Corp. (25th); Illumina, Inc. (t-291st); InterDigital Inc. (91st); LG Corp. (2nd); Nikon Corp. (t-268th); Omron Corp. (t-146th); Renesas Electronics Corp. (t-255th); Rockwell Automation, Inc. (t-244th); Shimadzu Corp. (t-185th); Subaru Corp. (150th); Toyota Motor Corp. (10th)
• Friday: Philip Morris International Inc. (t-200th); Tokyo Electron Ltd. (90th)