Alexandros Nikolaidis

On June 15, 2026, a federal court in San Francisco dismissed xAI’s trade secret claims against OpenAI with prejudice. The dismissal came with prejudice for a reason that sits at the heart of this article: xAI had sought to keep the case alive long enough to obtain, in discovery, the evidence it lacked at filing. The court refused, holding that a plaintiff “was required to have completed its investigation of its claims before filing suit, not after.” Put differently: the court did not treat a job interview as a trade secret extraction ceremony.

A recent U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit decision applying California trade secret law offers a timely reminder that published patent materials cannot easily be recast as trade secrets. In International Medical Devices, Inc. v. Cornell, the Federal Circuit reversed trade-secret liability and vacated related damages and injunctive relief after concluding that the plaintiffs had not shown protectable trade secrets under the California Uniform Trade Secrets Act.

In a recent ruling with significant implications for patent licensing disputes, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit’s decision in Acorda Therapeutics, Inc. v. Alkermes Pharma Ireland Ltd., No. 2023-2374 (Fed. Cir. July 25, 2025), demonstrates just how critical proper jurisdictional framing is when contesting patent-related arbitration awards. The case reminds practitioners and stakeholders that even when patents sit at the heart of a dispute, the way a claim is framed can determine whether the matter will be heard by a federal court—or deflected into purely state law territory.