Posts in IPWatchdog Articles

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (CAFC) issued a decision today in Tesla, Inc. v. Charge Fusion Technologies, LLC, affirming in part, reversing in part, and vacating in part a final written decision of the United States Patent and Trademark Office’s Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB). The CAFC determined that the PTAB improperly construed a limitation of one independent claim but correctly construed limitations of other independent claims. The court reversed the finding of non-obviousness for claim 1, vacated the judgment regarding its dependent claims, and affirmed the finding of non-obviousness for the remaining claims.

In a win for TikTok, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (CAFC) today affirmed a district court’s grant of a Rule 12(c) motion holding 10Tales, Inc.’s targeted content patent claims invalid as ineligible under Section 101. The opinion was authored by Judge Reyna. 10Tales sued TikTok and ByteDance in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Texas, alleging infringement of its U.S. Patent No. 8,856,030, which generally covers “a system for customizing or personalizing content based on user social network information.”

This week on IPWatchdog Unleashed, I spoke with Lisa Jorgenson, who is Deputy Director at the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO). Jorgenson had just attended IPWatchdog LIVE 2026 and spoke on our final panel along with former U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) Director David Kappos, former USPTO Director Andrei Iancu, and former International Trade Commission (ITC) Commissioner Scott Kieff. She joined me immediately following the conference at IPWatchdog Studios for a wide-ranging discussion that pulled back the curtain on an institution many in the IP community think they understand—but often do not really appreciate.

Amicus briefs in the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office’s (USPTO’s) review of issues raised by a 2025 Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) rehearing decision regarding the judicially-created doctrine of obviousness-type double patenting (ODP) were due on Friday, March 27. At least one amicus is urging the Office to affirm the decision’s holding and clarify that the focus should be on “whether there is any unjustified extension of term when determining if an ODP rejection is appropriate” in order to create more consistent outcomes in examination and to harmonize the approaches of the PTAB and examining corps.

The strength of many of today’s most valuable companies is based significantly on intangible assets, like trademarks, patents, trade secrets and brand reputation. Hard-assets or “tangibles,” like real estate and equipment, are a relative blip on many large businesses value radar. What is surprising is the extent to which these companies are dominated by intangible assets and what that means for how they are understood and financed.

At IPWatchdog LIVE 2026, a panel on IP litigation strategy returned to a point experienced litigators know well: most IP cases are not won at trial. Instead, the decisive work often occurs much earlier, through pre-suit diligence, early motion practice, discovery strategy, and expert challenges that shape whether a case survives long enough to reach a jury.

Viering, Jentschura & Partner mbB, a large law firm headquartered in Munich, Germany, and with offices throughout Germany and in Singapore, is seeking a U.S. patent attorney for its Dresden office. Our U.S. team drafts and prosecutes patent applications in the United States for a variety of U.S., European, and Asian companies; drafts legal opinions (e.g., infringement, invalidity, and freedom to operate); and counsels clients on U.S. litigation and post-grant proceedings. Sample representative technical areas include telecommunications, semiconductors, memory and data storage, autonomous vehicles, advanced sensor systems, artificial neural networks, and thin film applications.

On remand from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (CAFC), the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) on Thursday reaffirmed its decision that The Broad Institute, Inc., Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and President and Fellows of Harvard College (“Broad”) were the first inventors of the use of CRISPR-Cas9 gene editing in eukaryotic cells.

This week in Other Barks & Bites: Merck enters into a $6.7 billion agreement to purchase Terns Pharma to improve its pipeline of experimental cancer therapies; the Federal Circuit says that common law principles prevented Ascendis Pharma from obtaining a mandatory stay in a second lawsuit including the same claims as a first complaint that was voluntarily dismissed; and more.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (CAFC) today issued a precedential decision in Ascendis Pharma A/S v. BioMarin Pharmaceutical Inc., affirming a district court order that upheld the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California decision denying Ascendis’s motion for a mandatory stay under 28 U.S.C. § 1659(a)(2). The ruling concluded that Ascendis was not entitled to a mandatory stay because Ascendis voluntarily dismissed its original complaint and filed a virtually identical refiled complaint to restart the statutory deadline. Judge Stoll authored the opinion, joined by Judges Lourie and Chen.

The U.S. government filed its brief in opposition yesterday to Janssen Pharmaceuticals and Bristol Myers Squibb Company’s (BMS) petition for writ of certiorari challenging the government’s Medicare Drug Price Negotiation Program. A split U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit decision  in September 2025 affirmed a grant of summary judgment to the government that the imposition of the Program via the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) does not violate the companies’ constitutional rights.

A panel on day three of IPWatchdog LIVE 2026 offered the IP community a candid look at how large operating companies actually evaluate and respond to patent assertions. The answers carry direct implications for every practitioner advising clients on the sell side of a transaction. The session, titled The Big Tech View on Patents and the Patent Market, featured Russell Binns (Allied Security Trust (AST)), Ola Adekunle (Google), Caroline Pinkston (Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE)), and Dean Geibel (Samtec).

Today, the U.S. House of Representatives Judiciary Committee’s Subcommittee on Courts, Intellectual Property, Artificial Intelligence, and the Internet conducted its first oversight hearing of the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) during the second Trump Administration. The harshest lines of questioning for USPTO Director John Squires during the hearing were reserved for the agency’s notice of proposed rulemaking (NPRM) to reform rules of practice at the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) as well as President Trump’s political influence at the agency. During the hearing, Squires also confirmed that the agency’s Patent Public Advisory Committee (PPAC) would soon be revived, following an offer to join PPAC extended last night to an undisclosed independent inventor.

The U.S. Supreme Court on Wednesday reversed a decision by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit, ruling that internet service provider Cox Communications, Inc., is not contributorily liable for its subscribers’ copyright infringement. In a 7-2 decision authored by Justice Thomas, the Court held that a service provider is contributorily liable for a user’s infringement only when it intended for its service to be used in that way, which is established only if the provider either encouraged the infringement or designed the service specifically to facilitate it.

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