Posts in IPWatchdog Articles

This year saw a world in which many employees had forms of Generative AI (GenAI) at their fingertips, either in the workplace or on their personal devices, and a world in which organizations continued to face unprecedented levels of cyber risk as they continued their digital transformation journeys. While data breach litigation is not new and tales of company confidential information being copied and pasted into open GenAI tools have haunted employers for what feels like years, trade secret issues arising from data breaches and GenAI use were not really trending issues in the courts in 2025. Indeed, perhaps surprisingly, equitable and contractual duties of confidence lay at the heart of the few cases involving trade secrets that were considered by the UK courts in 2025, with directors being under the microscope and the courts again grappling with issues around the identification and particularization of the confidential information at issue.

As we wind down 2025 it is time to reflect on the year that was, and what the future will bring. This year was punctuated by a structural reset for the U.S. patent system. What unfolded was not just incremental reform, but a coordinated shift driven by leadership change, policy realignment, economic pressure, and accelerating adoption of AI—all converging to reshape how patents are examined, challenged, monetized, and managed. This week on IPWatchdog Unleashed we explore the monumental changes and the biggest trends that impacted the patent and innovation industry during 2025, and which will play an important role in defining 2026.

It’s been a year of significant decisions from the Unified Patent Court (UPC), from both the first instance Local Divisions (LDs) and Central Division (CD) and the Court of Appeal (CoA).  Jurisdiction and, as more appellate decisions become available, the substantive law on patent validity and infringement, have come into focus. Decisions relating to enforcement also provide helpful indications for the future. 

In a year dominated by artificial intelligence (AI) copyright cases, 2025 also featured several influential cases on traditional copyright issues that will impact copyright owners, internet service providers, website owners, advertisers, social media users, media companies, and many others. Although the U.S. Supreme Court did not decide a copyright case this year, it heard argument on secondary liability and willfulness issues in Cox v. Sony. Lower courts continued to wrestle with applying the fair use factors two years after the Supreme Court issued Warhol v. Goldsmith. The divide over whether the “server test” applies to embedded works deepened—and remains unsettled. And the Ninth Circuit further refined the standard for pleading access to online works. This article highlights some of the most important copyright cases from this year and their practical implications.

The year 2025 was one of profound change at the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO). The magnitude and rate at which changes were implemented is unprecedented. The size and role of the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) in America Invents Act (AIA) proceedings like inter partes reviews (IPRs) was completely overhauled.

This week in Other Barks and Bites: Will Page’s Global Value of Music Copyright report shows that industry revenues have doubled since 2015 despite slowing growth as pandemic impacts are no longer felt; the Federal Circuit rules that it lacks jurisdiction to hear an appeal of an $8 million bond set under an Idaho state law prohibiting bad faith patent assertions; Micron expects the market for high-bandwidth memory chips to reach $100 billion by 2018; and more.

On Thursday, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (CAFC) issued its opinion in Micron Technology v. Longhorn IP. As reported earlier, the CAFC held that it lacked jurisdiction to hear Longhorn’s appeal from a district court order that required Longhorn to post an $8 million bond to proceed with a patent infringement case. In imposing the bond, the district court had relied on Idaho’s “anti-troll” statute, which outlaws assertions of patent infringement made in “bad faith.” Also under that statute, if a court finds a “reasonable likelihood” that a patent owner has made a bad faith assertion, the court must require the patent owner to post a bond equal to its opponent’s estimated litigation costs and damages.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (CAFC) on Wednesday issued a precedential decision in Micron Technology, Inc. v. Longhorn IP LLC, dismissing an appeal from a district court’s order imposing an $8 million bond under the Idaho Bad Faith Assertions of Patent Infringement Act. The opinion was authored by Judge Lourie and joined by Judges Schall and Stoll.

Senators Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) and Peter Welch (D-VT) have introduced a bill to streamline the copyright registration process for visual artists, such as photographers, illustrators and graphic artists. According to a press release issued by Blackburn yesterday, “the [copyright] registration process is so bureaucratic and complicated that the time and expense of compliance is too high for high-volume creators like photographers, illustrators, and graphic artists.”

For sports fans, certain moments are etched in memory, like Sid Bream sliding into home to clinch the pennant or Kelee Ringo’s interception to seal a national championship. Even celebratory dances, like Ickey Woods’ “Ickey Shuffle,” become part of the sport’s cultural legacy. These are sequences of planned and unplanned movements, which leads us to ask a question concerning intellectual property law: Can a coach’s football play be copyrighted? The answer, as with many IP issues, relies upon the distinction between a creative, fixed work and a purely functional, evolving activity. While the Ickey Shuffle might find protection in the eyes of the law, the play call that leads to the touchdown likely will not.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (CAFC) on Wednesday issued a mixed, split, precedential ruling in Wonderland Switzerland AG v. Evenflo Company, Inc., reversing a permanent injunction and granting a new trial for willful patent infringement in a case between two child car seat manufacturers. The court found a district court judge abused his discretion both in granting an injunction based on speculative harm and in excluding a key email chain that asked how to “ingeniously” avoid a patent. The opinion was authored by Chief Judge Moore and Judge Reyna concurred-in-part and dissented-in-part.

Today, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit issued a nonprecedential ruling in Entropic Communications, LLC v. Charter Communications, Inc. finding that the Eastern District of Texas did not abuse its discretion in denying third party Electronic Frontier Foundation’s (EFF) motion for permissive intervention in patent infringement proceedings. Applying Fifth Circuit rulings on Federal Rule of Civil Procedure (FRCP) 24(b), the Federal Circuit agreed that EFF did not timely move to unseal summary judgment briefs surrounding infringement under the relevant cable data transmission standard.

As 2025 comes to a close, the holiday season is here, and in the fast-paced environment of IP law, the right tools can make a difference for the IP attorney in your life. We’ve crafted a list of the top five gift ideas this holiday season, tailored to IP attorneys, that are effective, practical, and innovative. From high-tech noise-canceling headphones to foundational IP reading, here are some last-minute gift ideas for those still scrambling to get their holiday shopping done.

In a Progress Statement published Monday, the UK Government said that its ongoing consultation on copyright and AI has drawn over 11,500 responses, 10,112 of which were submitted via an online survey service, and that 88% of those who responded online supported requiring licenses to use copyrighted works for AI training in all cases.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (CAFC) on Tuesday affirmed a district court’s dismissal of a patent infringement suit brought by Cooperative Entertainment, Inc. against Kollective Technology, Inc., over a patent for peer-to-peer (P2P) content distribution, holding that Cooperative had waived its new infringement theory and was judicially estopped from contradicting its previous arguments.