Posts in District Courts

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.

On September 1, the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) filed a Statement of Interest urging the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York to hold that using copyrighted written works to train large language models (LLMs) is fair use, arguing that a contrary result would distort copyright law, suppress innovation and weaken U.S. competitiveness and national security. The statement was filed in reference to the multidistrict copyright litigation against OpenAI, although it specifically addressed claims by The New York Times and said its reasoning also applies to the related cases involving book authors and publishers.

Many Worlds 2T Innovations LLC has filed a patent infringement lawsuit against OpenAI OpCo, LLC, alleging that OpenAI’s artificial intelligence products and services infringe five AI patents covering personalized search, vector-based retrieval, recommendation systems and probabilistically controlled content generation. The complaint, filed August 31, 2026, in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Texas, Marshall Division, seeks a jury trial, monetary damages in the form of past and continuing royalties, enhanced damages for alleged willful infringement, and an injunction prohibiting continued infringement.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (CAFC) issued a precedential decision on Monday in Exelixis, Inc. v. MSN Laboratories Private Ltd., affirming a district court finding that certain patent claims covering a cancer treatment satisfy the written description requirement under 35 U.S.C. Section 112(a). The court also granted a motion to dismiss a separate portion of the appeal as moot and vacated the underlying district court judgment on that issue.

Former U.S. District Judge Alan D. Albright of the Western District of Texas has returned to private practice as a partner in A&O Shearman’s IP litigation practice as of today. Albright announced in April that he would leave the Western Texas bench by the end of August. Nominated to the federal judiciary during the first Trump Administration, Judge Albright earned a reputation of thoughtfulness and fairness in the application of patent law among plaintiff- and defendant-side lawyers arguing in his courtroom

On August 21, wikiHow, Inc. filed a complaint in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York against OpenAI, Inc. and eight affiliated entities, alleging violations of the Copyright Act and the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA). The lawsuit centers on claims that OpenAI copied wikiHow’s how-to articles without authorization to train ChatGPT and to ground its outputs, then used that copied content to generate substitutes for wikiHow’s website.

On Friday, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit issued a ruling answering multiple questions of first impression regarding copyright claims involving building plans, including the scope of protection under the Architectural Works Copyright Protection Act (AWCPA) for constructed buildings and floorplan renderings. Vacating the Western District of Texas’ dismissal of Kipp Flores Architects’ (KFA) copyright infringement claims, the Fifth Circuit affirmed the lower court’s dismissal of KFA’s claims under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) over alleged failures to include copyright management information (CMI) on new floorplans developed from KFA’s technical drawings.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (CAFC) on Friday issued a precedential decision denying a number of inventors’ associations standing to sue the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) for failing to amend alleged inaccurate language on the cover of issued U.S patents. District Judge Rachel Kovner of the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of New York, sitting by designation, authored the precedential opinion of the court.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (CAFC) issued a precedential decision today, authored by Chief Judge Moore, first affirming a district court’s orders dismissing a patent infringement complaint without granting leave to amend and awarding attorney’s fees, and secondly, dismissing an appeal of attorney sanctions for lack of jurisdiction. VDDP, LLC sued Volkswagen Group of America, Inc. in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Texas, alleging infringement of its U.S. Patent No. 9,426,452, relating to “electrically controlled spectacles.”… The district court dismissed the case with prejudice under Rule 12(b)(6), denied the motion for leave to amend as futile, denied VDDP’s motion to amend the judgment under Rule 59(e), awarded Volkswagen $207,543.60 in attorney’s fees, and sanctioned VDDP’s counsel, William Peterson Ramey III, under 28 U.S.C. § 1927, holding him and VDDP jointly and severally liable for the attorney’s fees.

Yesterday, U.S. Magistrate Judge David Horan of the Northern District of Texas entered a report and recommendation urging the district court to deny motions for dismissal or a more definitive statement filed by German software giant SAP in a trade secret case brought by Texas-based enterprise AI developer o9 Solutions. While acknowledging that either side’s theory of the case might ultimately win, Judge Horan found that the burdens associated with SAP’s motions ultimately led to the conclusion that o9’s misappropriation case over supply chain management software should proceed.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (CAFC) issued a decision Tuesday affirming a judgment of non-infringement entered by the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida in a dispute concerning generic versions of the topical pain patch ZTlido. The panel of Judges Reyna, Mayer, and Hughes, ruling per curiam, upheld the district court’s construction of the term “dissolving agent” and its determination that Aveva Drug Delivery Systems’ proposed generic product did not infringe under the doctrine of equivalents.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (CAFC) issued a precedential decision on Tuesday, authored by CAFC Chief Judge Moore, vacating a district court’s grant of a preliminary injunction (PI) for Socket Solutions, LLC that had barred Import Global from manufacturing, using, selling, offering to sell, or importing into the United States its Neat Socket® product.

The U.S. Court of Appeal for the Federal Circuit (CAFC) on Monday denied a petition for a writ of mandamus filed by Amazon.com Services LLC requesting that a district court proceeding be stayed pending the outcome of a separate proceeding against Google involving one of the same patents.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (CAFC) issued a decision Friday affirming a grant of summary judgment of noninfringement entered by the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California. The appeal, brought by the Regents of the University of Michigan against Leica Microsystems, Inc., concerned the construction of claim language describing a “supercontinuum” white light pulse used in fluorescence detection technology.