Posts in Business

The demo works. A potential customer is interested. Then the contract arrives, asking the company to confirm that it has the rights necessary to provide the product, protect customer information, and stand behind an infringement claim. The company’s customer commitments must match the rights it actually holds. A working demo alone cannot establish that match.

A meme can travel from a private joke to a global advertising campaign before its creator – or the owner of the image behind it – has time to object. Coined by Richard Dawkins in 1976 to describe a unit of cultural transmission that replicates and mutates as it spreads, “memes” include reaction GIFs, catchphrases, and familiar templates such as “Distracted Boyfriend” and “Surprised Pikachu.” For brands and creators, that speed and reach can be irresistible: the right meme, deployed at the right moment, can reach millions within hours.

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.

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.

A new report that examines education at the leading U.S. business schools has found that more and better courses are being offered to students at graduate business programs about how intellectual property (IP) rights function in business, but not a single program requires an IP-related course be completed to obtain a degree.

This week on IPWatchdog Unleashed, I speak with Nancy Braman. Recorded before a live audience at IPWatchdog’s 2026 Women’s IP Forum, our conversation explores how practitioners create opportunities, develop professional relationships, and build the skills necessary to succeed in patent law. From taking PLI patent bar review course before law school, to attending Franklin Pierce Law School, to spending more than three years writing and researching for IPWatchdog and now litigating high-stakes patent and intellectual property disputes for life sciences and technology companies. She has already had quite the journey, and I sense it is really just beginning.

A brand protection program can remove thousands of infringing listings and still leave the business behind them largely intact. Sellers return under different accounts, storefronts multiply, and counterfeit goods continue reaching customers. AI compounds the problem: the same technology that helps rights holders detect infringement can help counterfeiters generate replacement listings and create new accounts more quickly. Such is the neverending game of whack-a-mole confronting brands.

This week on IPWatchdog Unleashed, I spoke with Fran Cruz and Marlene Valderrama. Recorded before a live audience following IPWatchdog’s Women’s IP Forum, our conversation explored how professionals build relationships that lead to business, career opportunities, and better ways of doing their jobs. Drawing on their perspectives at Juristat and Halliburton, respectively, Fran and Marlene returned to a fundamental point: earning someone’s attention begins with understanding what matters to them. That requires asking questions and actually listening.

In economic theory, corporate value creation can be attributed to many factors and conflicting preferences. Prioritizing different factors produces a set of different outcomes and the outcome that is seemingly most efficient becomes the accepted norm. Sometimes however, corporate actors rely on accepted business practices which, while taken in the pursuit of the most optimal outcome, facilitate market distortions. Hit by a compute-driven demand shock and faced with resource scarcity, Samsung, SK Hynix, and Micron have opted to allocate production capacity in a way that has exacerbated an industry- wide memory card supply shortage. But to fully understand why the price of hardware components and consumer electronic devices has been steadily surging, we must first start with Nvidia.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (CAFC) issued a decision today in Truinject Corp. v. Galderma S.A., affirming a U.S. District Court for the District of Delaware judgment for Galderma S.A. on tortious interference, breach of contract, and trade secret misappropriation claims. The CAFC held that Truinject Corporation forfeited its arguments on appeal about the dismissal of its tortious interference claim and the summary judgment of no damages.

Recent discussions about artificial intelligence (AI) in legal practice tend to split into two opposing positions. One holds that junior attorneys should not meaningfully use AI because it will interfere with their development and prevent the formation of sound legal judgment. The other holds that AI will replace junior attorneys by eliminating the tasks they traditionally performed. Both positions rest on the same hidden assumption, which is that AI carries a direction of its own and that the profession’s task is to decide whether to accept it or resist it.

A Lanham Act false advertising verdict is not a scientific meta-analysis. It does not pool evidence, weight studies by quality, or resolve heterogeneity. It allocates burdens and asks whether the party carrying one carried it on the record that party chose to build. Read a false advertising judgment for more than that — for what the science shows, for whether the product works — and you will misread it.

On September 1, a federal judge in the Northern District of Ohio J.M. Smucker Co.‘s trademark and trade dress claims over its crustless, crimped-edge peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. The ruling allows that was filed last October against Trader Joe’s private-label “Crustless Peanut Butter & Strawberry Jam Sandwiches” to proceed to discovery and, potentially, a merits determination on whether a sealed, circular sandwich shape can function as a protectable trademark.