Posts in Guest Contributors

Most companies entering a joint development agreement are focused on making the project work. What they are less focused on—and what can create serious problems years down the line—is what happens to the confidential information shared during that project once it ends. That’s one of the central arguments Emily Teesdale, founder of Pivot IP, makes in a recent episode of IP Innovators.

Pharmaceutical patent litigators are no strangers to the delicate dance between the Hatch-Waxman Act and 35 U.S.C. § 271(b). On one side of this statutory tightrope lies the Hatch-Waxman Act’s Section VIII pathway, which was designed to expedite affordable generic competition by allowing manufacturers to seek Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approval solely for unpatented indications—the proverbial “skinny label.” On the flip side lies Section 271(b), which imposes strict liability on anyone who “actively induces” patent infringement.

A recent U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit decision applying California trade secret law offers a timely reminder that published patent materials cannot easily be recast as trade secrets. In International Medical Devices, Inc. v. Cornell, the Federal Circuit reversed trade-secret liability and vacated related damages and injunctive relief after concluding that the plaintiffs had not shown protectable trade secrets under the California Uniform Trade Secrets Act.

Welcome back to Cool AI Patents of the Month, where we highlight innovations that blur the line between science fiction and real-world engineering. Last month, we looked at AI-generated voice replicas, particularly in sports broadcasting. That concept is no longer theoretical. Major League Baseball players have reportedly entered into agreements enabling the creation of AI-driven digital avatars, allowing fans to engage directly with AI-generated versions of their favorite players. The takeaway is clear: personality and likeness are being productized. What once seemed futuristic is quickly becoming commercially relevant.

Intellectual property (IP) protections don’t merely shield Americans’ ideas and designs from theft—they underpin our entire economy and standard of living. Approximately 90% of the market value of the S&P 500 is in intangible assets, based on IP. Weakened IP protections erode American prosperity and human potential as IP-intensive industries support 63 million U.S. jobs and account for over 40% of America’s economic output.

The Supreme Court’s decision to hear Hikma Pharmaceuticals USA Inc. v. Amarin Pharma, Inc. is puzzling—and revealing. On its face, the case presents a narrow question: whether a generic drug manufacturer can be held liable for inducing patent infringement based on how it markets a product approved under a so-called “skinny label.” The dispute turns on whether Hikma’s conduct plausibly encouraged physicians to prescribe its generic drug for a patented use. But the Court’s decision to grant certiorari reflects something broader: a continued focus on lowering drug prices through faster generic entry, even at the risk of undermining the patent incentives that make pharmaceutical innovation possible.

In 2025, trademark cases filed in United States District Courts increased 25% from 2024 (up 848 cases to 4,211). Many of those cases were “Schedule A” lawsuits, a niche form of intellectual property litigation that joins multiple foreign-based ecommerce stores selling counterfeit, pirated, or other infringing products in a single lawsuit. In Schedule A cases, plaintiffs typically include multiple offshore online infringers and seek an asset restraint to prevent them from transferring their ill-gotten gains abroad. This article explores the Schedule A litigation model and provides best practices for intellectual property litigators. 

Standard essential patents (SEPs) don’t generate controversy because people disagree on whether innovation deserves compensation. The controversy runs deeper: everyone agrees it does, but nobody agrees on how much, when, or through which court. That tension was the animating force behind the panel Global SEP Litigation, Licensing and Dealmaking, on day two of IPWatchdog LIVE 2026 last month. Moderated by Shawnna Yashar (O’Melveny & Myers LLP), the panel featured Ali Allawi (Warner Bros. Discovery), Matteo Sabattini (Sisvel Group), and David Yurkerwich (Ankura). All four practitioners see the SEP licensing ecosystem from very different vantage points and arrived without a shared script.

On February 3, 2026, Sisvel took a significant step forward in advancing transparency through its collaboration with the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO). This initiative integrates verified SEP data into WIPO’s PATENTSCOPE platform, making it easier for users to access information about patents that have been identified as essential to the relevant standard through the mechanisms of Sisvel’s FRAND-based patent pools.

I have been to China several times over the past decade. Each time, I came back with the same reaction: too many people in the United States are still badly underestimating what is happening there. I do not say that as a political statement. I say it as a practical one. There is still a surprisingly common view in American business circles that China’s patent activity is mostly noise. Too many filings. Too much subsidy. Too little real innovation. The implication is that, yes, China may be filing a mountain of patents, but most of it can safely be discounted. I think that view is becoming harder and harder to defend.

For decades, management scholars and practitioners have grappled with what I call the “knowledge problem” in organizations—the stubborn difficulty of codifying and transferring expertise that resides in individual employees’ heads and habits. The most valuable organizational knowledge has always been tacit: the judgment calls, the contextual adaptations, the intuitive “feel” for how things get done. This knowledge walked out the door every evening and, more problematically, departed permanently when employees moved to competitors.

I have spent most of my professional career talking to patent practitioners about AI. For years, the conversation was about whether AI could be trusted, whether it was ready, and whether it would actually change how patent work gets done. I have watched the profession move from skepticism to curiosity to cautious adoption to – in 2026, for the first time – something that feels like acceptance. Questions that once provoked heated debate at conferences now feel almost trite. Nobody is really questioning whether AI has a place in patent practice anymore. The question that has replaced it is harder and more consequential:

While artificial intelligence (AI) companies have long maintained that copyright law poses a significant barrier to innovation, it’s getting harder for them to make that argument with a straight face. It was one thing to claim that early text-based chatbots were magical boxes that didn’t really depend on the copyrighted works used to train them—a pretense that doesn’t hold up under scrutiny. But it’s quite another to make such claims when their systems are spitting out nearly perfect audiovisual renditions of Disney’s copyrighted characters, including Buzz Lightyear from Toy Story, Darth Vader from Star Wars, and Elsa from Frozen. That’s what Midjourney was doing when Disney sued it for infringement, and it’s also what OpenAI was doing when it struck a licensing deal with Disney.

If 2025 was the year every IP practice rushed to adopt AI, 2026 is the year the bill comes due — and a striking number of organizations are discovering they have no reliable way to read it. That was the organizing message from IPWatchdog LIVE 2026’s session: The Business Impact of AI in Practice: Calculating ROI in the AI Era.