Posts in IPWatchdog Articles

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (CAFC) on Thursday denied two petitions for writ of mandamus arguing the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia abused its discretion in transferring three related patent infringement suits to the Northern District of Illinois.

Congress is considering a bill that would let patents on prescription drugs be rendered unenforceable over an honest paperwork error, even when the underlying invention is genuinely new, non-obvious, and valuable to patients. Supporters of the Medication Affordability and Patent Integrity Act (S. 2658), which the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee reported in July, say it will lower drug prices by closing what they describe as a loophole that drugmakers use to extend their monopolies.

Many intellectual property rights peacefully coexist because they apply to distinct aspects of a product. Issues can arise when intellectual property rights that expire and intellectual property rights that do not expire protect the same or overlapping features of the same product. One example is design patents and trade dress rights, both of which apply to non-functional ornamental features.

The U.S. Supreme Court issued an order on Monday in BMG Rights Management (US) LLC v. Vetter affirming the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit’s judgment granting a songwriter ownership of the worldwide copyright in “Double Shot (Of My Baby’s Love).” The Court entered the affirmance under 28 U.S.C. Section 2109, following a September 30 reply in which BMG Rights Management (US) LLC and the other petitioners urged the Court to grant certiorari and reverse.

Venable LLP’s Intellectual Property Group is seeking a mid-level associate with five to seven years of substantive U.S. trademark experience in a law firm setting to join our practice in Washington, D.C. Our team advises and represents clients across the full spectrum of trademark and brand protection law, including prosecution, clearance, enforcement, portfolio management, and proceedings before the Trademark Trial and Appeal Board (TTAB).

Artificial intelligence could help deliver the next generation of lifesaving medicines. It could also weaken the economic foundation that makes discovering those medicines possible. Both propositions deserve serious attention, and neither is mutually exclusive. Celebrating faster discovery tells only part of the story if the same technology allows competitors to appropriate the commercial opportunity created by pioneer research or obtain patent claims that obstruct the innovator’s next steps.

On Monday, the U.S. Supreme Court issued an order list that included a denial of Google’s petition for writ of certiorari challenging the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office’s (USPTO’s) development of settled expectations doctrine at the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB). This latest setback to industry-wide efforts opposing the duration of a patent’s life in force as a consideration leading to discretionary denials of inter partes review (IPR) proceedings comes a few weeks after the U.S. Solicitor General urged denial of Google’s cert petition, agreeing with the Federal Circuit that such a challenge was not available on mandamus review.

The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday denied certiorari in Frederick L. Allen, et al. v. Joshua Stein, Governor of North Carolina, a decade-plus long case that led to a Supreme Court decision as well as the introduction and subsequent repeal of a law to shield North Carolina from copyright liability. In January 2026, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit issued the most recent ruling in the case, which related to Frederick (“Rick) Allen’s copyright battle against the State of North Carolina over documentary footage of a state-sponsored salvage project exhuming a shipwreck associated with the famed pirate, Blackbeard. Videographer Frederick Allen and his company Nautilus Productions recorded footage of a private company’s project to salvage Blackbeard’s flagship Queen Anne’s Revenge from the North Carolina coastline.

A patent’s economic value and the price it commands in a licensing negotiation can be very different things. The technology may deliver substantial commercial benefits, yet the amount a patent owner can capture depends on legal risk, enforcement costs, negotiating leverage, and each party’s business objectives. This week on IPWatchdog Unleashed, we ask how much a patent is really worth, and how to prove it at a negotiating table or in court. This conversation, which occurred as part of IPWatchdog’s 2026 Women’s IP Forum, examines how sophisticated licensors, licensees, counsel, and valuation professionals assess patent value in real-world transactions and disputes. The conversation explored royalty structures, comparable licenses, portfolio strength, litigation and validity risk, damages principles, standard-essential patent (SEP) licensing, and the practical factors that drive parties toward—or away from—a deal.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (CAFC) issued a precedential decision today in Google LLC v. Valtrus Innovations Ltd., affirming a Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) final written decision that found Google did not demonstrate the unpatentability of claims 1 through 23 of a patent on merging search-result lists. The court rejected arguments that the Board relied on legally insufficient evidence to corroborate an inventor’s conception testimony and that substantial evidence did not support a finding of reasonably continuous diligence.

Last week, the Court of Justice for the European Union (CJEU) issued a pair of press releases conveying important clarifications to large platform designations under a pair of major legislative packages regulating e-commerce within the EU: the Digital Services Act (DSA) and the Digital Markets Act (DMA). In one ruling by the EU’s General Court, and another opinion issued by an Advocate General of the CJEU, large platform designations creating obligations under either of those acts have been upheld for both major social media platform TikTok and Stripchat, an online adult entertainment platform operated across the EU.

Brazil is ranked as the world’s third-largest beauty and personal care consumer market, according to Euromonitor data compiled by ABIHPEC (Brazilian Association of the Cosmetic, Toiletry and Fragrance Industry. Even in a socially and economically diverse country such as Brazil, self-care is a priority. Beauty products are present in nearly 100% of Brazilian households and account for almost 6% of the global market. Brazilians are also open to trying new products and brands. In this context, Asian beauty brands are already gaining a significant foothold in the country…. However, successfully entering the Brazilian market involves more than making products available to local consumers. It also requires protecting the IP assets that underpin the brand.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (CAFC) issued a decision Friday in Linden v. ResMed, Inc., affirming a ruling by the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of California that dismissed a patent infringement lawsuit after finding the asserted claims ineligible under 35 U.S.C. Section 101. Craig L. Linden argued that the district court erred in treating Claim 1 as representative at each step of the eligibility analysis.

I have spent my career around artists: booking them, interviewing them, publishing their stories and watching how this business treats the people who make it run. Right now the most valuable thing many of those artists own is not a catalog. It is their voice. And in the United States, how well that voice is protected still depends on where you happen to be standing. That has to change. Congress should pass one federal voice-and-likeness right, and it should do it now.