Posts in IPWatchdog Articles

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (CAFC) on Monday affirmed a district court’s summary judgment of non-infringement and judgment as a matter of law (JMOL) in Shopify Inc. v. Express Mobile, Inc., confirming the rejection of a $40 million jury verdict against Shopify. Shopify filed a declaratory judgment action in the U.S. District Court for the District of Delaware, seeking a declaration of noninfringement of the claims of U.S. Patent Nos. 9,063,755, 9,471,287, 6,546,397, and 7,594,168, which relate to website design and functionality. Express Mobile counterclaimed for infringement of those patents and additionally asserted U.S. Patent No. 9,928,044 by accusing Shopify’s Theme Editor and its underlying “Liquid” template technology.

Today, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit issued a precedential ruling in Coda Development S.R.O. v. Goodyear Tire & Rubber Co. affirming the Northern District of Ohio’s post-verdict grant of judgment as a matter of law (JMOL) to Goodyear on state trade secret and federal inventorship claims raised by Coda. The Federal Circuit ruled that Coda’s trade secret claims were either not defined with sufficient particularity or were publicly disclosed in patent applications filed by Coda, leading the appellate court to dismiss the appellant’s correction of inventorship claims as well.

What’s really holding America back in the biopharma race against China isn’t just Beijing’s subsidies or cheaper labor. It’s the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit’s self-inflicted wound: a court so panel-dependent that no one—brand or generic—knows which rule will apply until the panel is drawn. The Supreme Court can fix this in one stroke by granting certiorari in MSN Pharmaceuticals v. Novartis (No. 25-225) and killing the bizarre “after-arising technology” exception that lets old, vague patents swallow future inventions.

The U.S. Supreme Court today declined to grant a petition filed by Recentive Analytics, Inc. asking the Court to weigh in on whether the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit’s (CAFC’s) approach to patent eligibility for machine learning claims is improper. The petition was filed in October following an April 2025 decision by the CAFC that addressed an issue of first impression in the patent eligibility context; the opinion held that “claims that do no more than apply established methods of machine learning to a new data environment” are not patent eligible.

On December 5, The New York Times Company (the Times) filed a complaint for copyright and trademark infringement against Perplexity AI, Inc. in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, adding another major lawsuit to the growing wave of litigation against generative artificial intelligence (AI) companies. The Times alleged in its filing that Perplexity engaged in “large-scale, unlawful copying and distribution” of millions of its articles to build its AI-powered “answer engine.” The complaint argued that Perplexity’s products directly substitute for the newspaper’s own content, thereby undermining its business and devaluing its journalism. Perplexity’s conduct “threatens this legacy and impedes the free press’s ability to continue playing its role in supporting an informed citizenry and a healthy democracy,” the Times argued.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (CAFC) on Friday vacated and remanded a district court’s decision in favor of Meta, rejecting the court’s finding that patent owner Adnexus had failed to state a plausible claim for direct infringement. The decision was precedential and authored by Judge Stark, with whom Judges Taranto and Prost joined.

This week in Other Barks & Bites: The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office announced it has updated the Manual of Patent Examining Procedure to reflect recent eligibility guidance; The New York Times has sued Perplexity AI for copyright and trademark infringement; AGs from seven U.S. states sent a letter to the College Sports Commission calling out its “cartoonishly villainous” university participation agreement; and more.

The United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) today released two memos meant to provide additional guidance around the use of patent subject matter eligibility declarations (SMEDs) for examiners, applicants and practitioners, particularly with respect to “applied technologies” in areas like artificial intelligence and medical diagnostics. The memos do not alter existing procedures and are effective immediately.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit on Wednesday affirmed a district court’s decision to grant a temporary restraining order (TRO) in a trademark dispute between two tech companies, IYO, Inc., and IO Products, Inc, which merged with OpenAI in May 2025. The order prevents IO, a company co-founded by Sam Altman and Jonathan Paul Ive, from using the IO mark in connection with products that are related to IYO’s AI-based “audio computer.”

Last week, the U.S. Supreme Court issued an order deferring a decision in Trump v. Perlmutter, a case in which President Donald Trump is asking the Court to stay an interlocutory injunction issued by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit in September that allowed Register of Copyrights Shira Perlmutter to return to her post pending her lawsuit against Trump for removing her from office.

Arnold & Porter is an international law firm with 16 offices in the United States, Europe, and Asia that provides sophisticated regulatory, litigation, and transactional services across multiple industries. Arnold & Porter has an opening for a Senior Manager of IP Administration in the Washington, DC office. The Senior Manager of IP Administration oversees the firmwide IP Prosecution (Patent and Trademark) practice.

The deadline for comments on the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office’s (USPTO’s) Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (NPRM) issued in October, titled “Revision to Rules of Practice before the Patent Trial and Appeal Board,” was yesterday, December 2. As of today, the Office has received 10,783 comments and has published just over 1,000 of them. The rules have been broadly welcomed by IP holders and practitioners, and broadly opposed by those who want to preserve the option to easily challenge patents. Below, we summarize several submissions from individuals and organizations on both sides.

In the latest episode of IP Innovators, host Steve Brachmann speaks with Aaron Capron, partner and head of the Patent Office Practice at Finnegan, about how patent prosecution is evolving across AI, quantum computing, semiconductors, and other rapidly developing fields. Throughout the discussion, Capron consistently returns to themes that resonate deeply with experienced patent practitioners: the importance of thinking like an examiner, the need for robust infrastructure to manage complex portfolios, and the reality that legal technology—especially AI—requires thoughtful integration, not simple adoption.

Today, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit issued a precedential ruling in Seagen Inc. v. Daiichi Sankyo Co., Ltd., reversing the Eastern District of Texas’ denial of judgment as a matter of law (JMOL) that Seagen’s patent claims lacked both written description support and enablement. Applying precedent from both the U.S. Supreme Court and the Federal Circuit’s predecessor, the Court of Customs and Patent Appeals (CCPA), the appellate court found that Seagen’s disclosure on the original patent application claiming its antibody-drug conjugate cancer treatment was too broad to give the later-filed patent-at-issue the original application’s priority date, and also required undue experimentation to discover effective drug combinations.