Other Barks & Bites for Friday, May 1: EU Lands on USTR’s Special 301 Watch List; Battery Recycling Patent Families Increase Seven-Fold in Past Decade; and Google Cert Petition Challenges Settled Expectations Doctrine

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This week in Other Barks & Bites: the U.S. Trade Representative issues its annual Special 301 Report listing the European Union as a Watch List nation for IP-related issues; Senators Dick Durbin (D-IL) and Maria Cantwell (D-WA) publicly oppose the Trump Administration’s decisions to cut federal funding for science and upend the National Science Board; loss of patent exclusivity for Entresto leads to worse-than-expected quarterly sales for Novartis; the Court of Justice for the European Union rules that a retirement home operator making retransmissions of satellite broadcasts to rooms using an in-building cable system does not make public broadcasts infringing copyright; Google files a cert petition at the U.S. Supreme Court challenging the settled expectations doctrine at the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB); a joint report on battery recycling technologies shows that international patent families covering such technologies have increased seven-fold over the past decade; and Pfizer announces settlement with generic drugmakers that extend market exclusivity for VYNDAMAX into 2031.

Bites

Pharmaceutical, Digital Copyright Issues Land EU on USTR’s Special 301 List – On Thursday, April 30, the U.S. Trade Representative issued the 2026 Special 301 Report, an annual review of global IP protection, identifying Vietnam as a Priority Foreign Country, the first time in 13 years that a country has been included in that category for nations allowing the most egregious IP-related acts with adverse effects on U.S. products without entering into good faith negotiations to provide adequate IP protection. Added to the Special 301 Report’s Watch List for the first time was the European Union, which has raised IP concerns through the recent provisional agreement on the EU General Pharmaceutical Legislation (GPL), issues related to geographical indications (GIs) and legislation impacting digital copyright.

CJEU OKs Satellite Broadcast Retransmissions Within Retirement Home – On Thursday, April 30, the Court of Justice for the European Union (CJEU) issued a ruling finding that the retransmission of television and radio programs received by a satellite dish to the rooms of a retirement home via a cable system does not mean that the operator of the retirement home has made a “communication to the public” of the retransmitted broadcast, as the retransmission is not done with a specific technical means like the Internet and the residents of the home do not constitute a new public. The CJEU ruling comes in a case referred by the German Federal Court of Justice between German collective rights agency GEMA and retirement home operator VHC 2, with GEMA claiming copyright infringement caused by VHC 2’s unlicensed retransmissions of satellite broadcasts within its retirement home.

EPO-IEA Report Tracks Seven-Fold Increase in Battery Recycling Patents Over Past Decade – On Wednesday, April 29, the European Patent Office (EPO) and the International Energy Agency (IEA) published the results of a study into patents covering innovations in battery circularity, which includes collection, recycling and repurposing, identifying a seven-fold increase in international patent families claiming such inventions over the past decade since global sales of electric vehicles (EVs) surpassed one million units in 2017. The EPO-IEA joint report also found that 63% of international patent families in 2023 were owned by Asian companies with Chinese battery recycler Brunp emerging as a top patent owner in the sector ahead of Toyota, LG and Sumitomo.

Democratic Senators Call Out Budget Cuts, Firings Impacting Support for U.S. Innovation – On Monday, April 27, U.S. Senate Democratic Whip Dick Durbin (D-IL) gave a speech on the floor of the Senate opposing the 2027 fiscal year budget proposal from President Donald Trump for cutting $6 billion in federal funding to the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and $3 billion in funding to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), while also increasing military spending by 42% to support Trump’s Iran conflict. On the same day, Senator Maria Cantwell (D-WA) issued a public statement calling President Trump’s decision to fire members of the National Science Board “a dangerous attack on the institutions that drive American innovation and discovery” that “signals a reckless disregard for the scientific enterprise and the universities and broader

Google Challenges PTAB’s Settled Expectations Doctrine at SCOTUS – On Monday, April 27, Internet services giant Google filed a petition for writ of certiorari at the U.S. Supreme Court appealing the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit’s ruling this January which affirmed the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office’s (USPTO) denial of Google’s petition for inter partes review (IPR) proceedings to challenge patent claims owned by VirtaMove based on the patent owner’s settled expectations in patent rights that have been in force for more than 14 years. Google’s cert petition asks the Supreme Court whether the USPTO lacks statutory authority to consider settled expectations when IPR is available throughout the life of the patent, and whether federal courts have power to review IPR denials on grounds that are contrary to statute.

Japan’s LDP Calls for Penalties Against Malicious Copyright Infringement By Generative AI – On Friday, April 24, Japanese daily newspaper The Asahi Shimbun announced that leaders from that nation’s ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) publicly called for the establishment of civil penalties for repeated unauthorized uses of copyright-protected anime characters as well as private individuals in works generated by artificial intelligence (AI) platforms. LDP leaders indicated that a draft proposal strengthening Japan’s AI Law, passed last September, to include these new penalties will be submitted to the government as early as May. 

Barks

UK’s High Court Awards $392 Million Lump Sum to ZTE in Samsung Mobile Phone Patent Case – On Friday, May 1, the High Court of Justice of England and Wales issued a ruling in a patent infringement case between Chinese telecommunications company ZTE and Korean consumer electronics conglomerate Samsung, awarding a $392 million lump sum royalty to ZTE’s patent portfolio related to mobile phones as part of a multi-jurisdictional patent litigation campaign that includes cases in China, Brazil and Germany.

EPO to Begin Issuing Electronic PCT Notifications in June  – On Thursday, April 30, the European Patent Office (EPO) announced that, starting in June of this year, the agency would begin issuing electronic notifications of Patent Cooperation Treaty (PCT) communications through the World Intellectual Property Organization’s (WIPO) ePCT service, replacing paper notifications as the EPO takes another step towards a fully digital patenting process.

National Quantum Reauthorization Bill Passes Out of House Science Committee – On Wednesday, April 29, the full U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Science, Space, and Technology passed the National Quantum Initiative Reauthorization Act, which would strengthen federal coordination of quantum research and add the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) as a formal quantum research partner, out of committee toward a full vote on the floor of the House.

Judge Pryor Dissents From Seventh Circuit’s Affirming Minimum Lanham Act Damages – On Wednesday, April 29, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit issued a nonprecedential disposition affirming a default judgment in a Schedule A lawsuit between two Chinese parties marketing clothing under similar “bellelily” marks, finding that plaintiff Shenzhen Huajie failed to support its desired maximum statutory damages award. Circuit Judge Doris Pryor dissented from the majority’s ruling, arguing that the Northern District of Illinois’ ruling is so devoid of explanation supporting the damages award that it prevented the appellate court from meaningful appellate review to ensure that the district court considered relevant factors and actually exercised its discretion.

UK High Court Dismisses Recording Copyright Suit From Jimi Hendrix Bandmates – On Tuesday, April 28, the UK’s High Court issued a 140-page ruling dismissing copyright claims brought by the estates of bandmates of American rock legend Jimi Hendrix, concluding that original recording agreements covering about 40 studio recordings unequivocally assigned the global copyright in those recordings to the producers without any temporal or territorial limitation.

Pfizer Settlements With Generic Drugmakers Extend VYNDAMAX Exclusivity to 2031 – On Tuesday, April 28, American drugmaker Pfizer announced that it had entered into a series of three settlement agreements with generic drug manufacturers over their applications to market generic versions of the cardiovascular drug VYNDAMAX, which extends Pfizer’s market exclusivity for that drug for an additional two years after key patent expirations into 2031.

This Week on Wall Street 

Novartis Reports Slumping U.S. Sales Due to Loss of Entresto Exclusivity – On Tuesday, April 28, Swiss pharmaceutical developer Novartis reported earnings for the first quarter of 2026, showing that quarterly net sales came in below analyst expectations due in large part to the expiration of U.S. patent rights covering Novartis’ cardiovascular drug Entresto, which sank 42% in sales to $1.31 billion well below analyst predictions of $1.37 billion in sales.

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: ON Semiconductor Corp. (t-229th); Palantir Technologies Inc. (t-275th)
• Tuesday: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. (79th); Eaton Corp. (t-183rd); Emerson Electric Co. (t-238th); Innolux Corp. (145th); PayPal Holdings, Inc. (154th); Rockwell Automation, Inc. (t-244th); Winbond Electronics Corp. (t-247th)
• Wednesday: Bayerische Motoren Werke AG (137th); Continental AG (t-169th); Fresenius SE & Co. KGaA (202nd); Koninklijke Philips N.V. (53rd); Snap Inc. (51st); Whirlpool Corp. (t-176th)
• Thursday: Sony Corp. (11th)
• Friday: Nikon Corp. (t-268th); Toyota Motor Corp. (10th)