Posts in Guest Contributors

On day one of 2026, we asked IP stakeholders to give their predictions for the year ahead on the IP front. From copyright and fair use to patent reform and USPTO operations, here is what they had to say about what to expect in the New Year.

While being realistic and practical in IP law is usually prudent, it’s a helpful exercise to now and then articulate one’s fantasies for a perfect world in order to gauge what topics come up most often. This year, as in years past, clarity on patent eligibility law remains high, while protections for an improvement of AI tools takes second. Some of the wishes below have little chance of coming true in 2026, but others may be granted—here is what our participants would like to see happen for IP in the new year.

Global litigation over standard essential patents (SEPs) is facing new strategies by implementers, mainly related to venue selection. There is an increasing risk of foreign decisions aimed at interfering with decisions on infringement of patents granted and issued in foreign jurisdictions – in clear tension with the territoriality principle. There is also a trend of abuse of process in the selection of venues within specific countries aimed at creating obstacles and delaying remedies and effective protection for national IP rights.

As 2025 draws to a close, the intellectual property ecosystem faces a wave of transformative changes driven by artificial intelligence (AI) and evolving legislative priorities. From sweeping federal proposals aimed at harmonizing AI governance and overriding state laws, to new copyright and media integrity measures designed to address deepfakes and transparency, and finally to renewed momentum behind patent eligibility and Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) reform, these developments signal a pivotal moment for innovators, rights holders, and policymakers alike. This article explores three critical fronts shaping the future of IP: federal AI legislation and executive preemption, copyright accountability and media integrity, and the year-end outlook for patent reform—each redefining the balance between innovation, protection, and compliance.

For Section 337 investigations before the U.S. International Trade Commission (ITC), 2025 was a year of contrasts. As one example, the Federal Circuit’s long-awaited decision in Lashify, Inc. v. ITC reduced the burden for satisfying Section 337’s domestic industry requirement, under which ITC complainants must show adequate U.S. investments in practicing or exploiting the asserted intellectual property rights. But this lower threshold did not immediately result in increased Section 337 complaint filings. For much of 2025, uncertainty concerning U.S. trade policy and federal government operations likely depressed ITC complaint filings.

On December 23, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (CAFC) issued a precedential decision in Ethanol Boosting Systems, LLC v. Ford Motor Company, affirming the Patent Trial and Appeal Board’s (PTAB) invalidation of three patents owned by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and licensed to Ethanol Boosting Systems (EBS). The opinion was authored by Judge Chen and joined by Judges Clevenger and Hughes.

This year started with a district court decision defining the parameters of parody and trademark infringement and ended with a case that could have taken the overlap of parody and political free speech to a new level, had it not settled. That can of soup has not yet been opened. While brand owners expect that their trademarks and trade dress are federally protected properties under the Lanham Act, political figures, satirists and manufacturers of parody products expect their activities to be protected under the First Amendment and other carved out, fair use exclusions. Sometimes, these respective worlds collide. In 2025, this became abundantly clear.

What do affiliated corporate entities, non-fungible token (NFTs) and cinnamon-flavored whiskey have in common? They each were the subject of significant trademark rulings in 2025. Below, we review three cases with big implications for trademark law and what’s on the horizon for 2026.  

The battle over whether U.S. copyright law permits artificial intelligence (AI) training on copyrighted works is no longer a theoretical debate. In 2025, three federal district court decisions began to sketch the boundaries of what counts as fair use in this context.

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.

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.

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.

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.