Posts in Courts

Companies face substantial liability for trade secret misappropriation. Jury awards this year have reached staggering amounts…. On November 21, 2024, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit in Computer Sciences Corp. v. Tata Consultancy Services Ltd., __ 5th Cir. __, 2025 WL 3249148 (5th Cir. 2025), affirmed $56 million in compensatory damages, $112 million in punitive damages, a permanent injunction, and a 10-year monitorship against TCS… The Computer Sciences decision provides critical guidance on trade secret handling under the Defend Trade Secrets Act (DTSA), clarifies what constitutes “willful and malicious” misappropriation, and establishes that exemplary damages may be awarded even where the plaintiff suffers no harm beyond lost profits.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit on Tuesday dismissed an appeal from Zuru Inc. in its ongoing copyright and trademark dispute with the Lego group, finding that the court lacked appellate jurisdiction. Lego A/S, Lego Systems, Inc., and Lego Juris A/S first brought claims against Zuru Inc. in 2019, alleging that Zuru’s “First-Generation” toy figurines infringed on the copyright and trademark rights of Lego’s Minifigure. The U.S. District Court for the District of Connecticut granted Lego’s motion for a preliminary injunction, which enjoined Zuru from manufacturing or selling the infringing First-Generation figurines and “any figurine or image that is substantially similar to the Minifigure Copyrights or likely to be confused with the Minifigure Trademarks.”

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (CAFC) on Wednesday issued a precedential decision affirming the Trademark Trial and Appeal Board’s (TTAB’s) cancellation of the registration for the mark I AM MORE THAN AN ATHLETE. GP GAME PLAN. The CAFC also dismissed Game Plan, Inc.’s opposition to Uninterrupted IP, LLC’s (UNIP’s) six intent-to-use applications for marks containing I AM MORE THAN AN ATHLETE and MORE THAN AN ATHLETE. The opinion was authored by Judge Reyna.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (CAFC) on Tuesday issued a precedential decision in International Business Machines Corporation v. Zillow Group, Inc., affirming a Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) ruling that certain claims of an IBM patent on single sign-on (SSO) technology were unpatentable, while others were not. The CAFC found no fault with the PTAB’s claim construction or its analysis of the prior art and rejected IBM’s argument that the Board relied on a theory not raised in the initial petition for inter partes review (IPR).

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (CAFC) today issued three decisions denying mandamus relief to inter partes review (IPR) petitioners at the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) whose petitions were denied institution.  

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (CAFC) issued a precedential decision today authored by Chief Judge Moore reversing the Trademark Trial and Appeal Board’s (TTAB’s) affirmance of a refusal to register the mark KAHWA for cafes and coffee shops.

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.

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.

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.