Posts in International

In the knowledge-based economy, protecting intellectual property (IP) has become a crucial indicator of a nation’s technological and economic development. Latin America is no exception. Examining patent filing flows between Brazil and other Latin American countries offers valuable insights into regional innovation dynamics. Based on data from the Brazilian Patent and Trademark Office (BPTO), this article presents an overview of patent activity from 2002 to 2021, highlighting key technology sectors, international partnerships, the use of fast-track mechanisms, and prospects for strengthening regional cooperation.

The European Commission on Thursday published “The General-Purpose AI Code of Practice,” which is meant to complement the European Artificial Intelligence (AI) Act approved last year. The Code was developed by 13 independent experts across four working groups and with input from over 1,000 stakeholders, according to the European Commission. The EU AI Act came into force on August 1, 2024, with most provisions of the regulation applying as of August 2, 2026. However, the regulation said that compliance for prohibited practices were to be in effect by February 2, 2025, considering “the unacceptable risk associated with the use of AI in certain ways.”

Over the last several years the pharmaceutical industry has come under increased pressure. While many often say the pharmaceutical industry has the most powerful lobby, the truth is many politicians have grown increasingly frustrated with what they characterize as high drug prices; or at least much higher than in virtually every other country around the world. This has led to patents being blamed, with billboards and buses in Washington, DC, wrapped with slogans like “patents kill”.

Yesterday, the U.S. Senate Committee on the Judiciary’s Subcommittee on Intellectual Property held a hearing titled Foreign Threats to American Innovation and Economic Leadership, featuring testimony from private businesses on the myriad challenges facing American intellectual property (IP) owners in the face of illegal activities sponsored by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). Along with consumer safety and national security risks, the day’s hearing featured discussion of several IP-related bills, some of which will be introduced into Congress in the coming days.

The Unified Patent Court (UPC) has quickly become an important forum for pharmaceutical and biotech patent disputes in Europe. In 2024 and early 2025, a consistent theme has been the interplay between UPC proceedings and existing venues like European Patent Office (EPO) oppositions and national courts. Innovators and generic or biosimilar companies are now coordinating multi-front strategies engaging the UPC for pan-European relief while leveraging EPO opposition and selecting national litigations.

On the same day that the U.S. Copyright Office (USCO) officially released part three of its study into the effects of artificial intelligence (AI) on copyright law, the European Union Intellectual Property Office (EUIPO) announced its own 436-page report on AI and copyright. The EUIPO report was compiled by a research team of the University of Turin Law School and the Nexa Center for Internet & Society from the Polytechnic of Turin. It was based on “desk research as well as interviews from key stakeholder groups including, copyright holders, AI companies, technology solution providers as well as public organisations,” according to the EUIPO.

The UK Court of Appeal today ruled that Apple must pay Optis Cellular Technology LLC $502 million for a worldwide fair reasonable and non-discriminatory (FRAND) license to its 4G standard essential patents (SEPs) patents. With interest and fees, the total amount exceeds $700 million. Optis sued Apple in 2019, and a May 2023 ruling by Mr Justice Marcus Smith at the High Court of England and Wales awarded $56.43 million to Optis as a lump sum reasonable royalty for Apple’s infringement of the SEPs, a total that pales in comparison with damages verdicts that Optis has earned in litigation against Apple elsewhere.

A group of Chinese companies struck out for a second time at the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit Monday when the court ruled they lacked foreign sovereign immunity and therefore are not shielded from an indictment for economic espionage in connection with their alleged efforts to steal trade secrets from E.I. du Pont de Nemours & Company (DuPont).

This week on IPWatchdog Unleashed we have a conversation with two shareholders from Wolf, Greenfield & Sacks, PC. Ed Russavage and John Strand were both speakers on our recently concluded AI 2025 program. As the program wrapped up, and in front of a live studio audience, we sat down to discuss the current state of the industry from a client’s perspective, and focused our conversation on IP risk facing companies and what they can do to mitigate that IP risk.

Over the past few years, Brazil has started to gain traction as a forum for standard essential patent (SEP) litigation—and a big reason for that is how preliminary injunctions (PIs) work here. But long before SEPs were trending, injunctions have always played a central role in Brazilian IP enforcement. Let’s explore why injunctions are so common—and powerful—in Brazil, especially when compared to other countries.

As intellectual property law grapples with issues being raised by decisions such as  Thomson Reuters v. Ross Intelligence, The New York Times Company v. OpenAI, and – most recently – Recentive Analytics v. Fox Corp., panelists at IPWatchdog’s Artificial Intelligence & Emerging Technologies Masters™ 2025 said that industry and governments are presently at a crossroads with respect to reining in AI—and it’s imperative that they get it right.

This week on IPWatchdog Unleashed, I speak with my long-time friend Jim Carmichael, who is a former Administrative Patent Judge and the founder of Carmichael IP. In this extended 75-minute conversation, Carmichael discusses ten ways the USPTO could and should fix the PTAB, from fully reclaiming institution authority to eliminating expert witnesses in post grant proceedings to presuming the existence of a nexus for secondary considerations.

As tariffs and the trade war with China intensify, companies that have long relied on Chinese manufacturing are increasingly exploring alternatives across Asia—with Vietnam emerging as a top contender. The country offers a compelling combination of lower labor costs, strategic trade agreements such as the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP) , the EU-Vietnam Free Trade Agreement (EVFTA), and  Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP), and a rapidly improving infrastructure that supports large-scale production and export.

Yesterday, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce’s Global Innovation Policy Center published the 2025 International IP Index, the Chamber’s annual assessment of legal frameworks for intellectual property (IP) protections in countries across the globe. While this year’s IP Index marked little movement among the top nations for IP legal frameworks, leaving the United States as the top nation overall for yet another year, stronger IP protections in Middle Eastern countries and efforts to weaken IP protections for pharmaceuticals in the EU and U.S. were among the key findings driving changes to this year’s report.

This week on this edition of IPWatchdog Unleashed, we speak with Sonja London. Sonia has been general counsel at TactoTek and before that she spent 14 years working for Nokia, where she oversaw Nokia’s consumer electronics licensing, global licensing program for connectivity and video codecs, and was responsible for standardization. Sonja has spent the last year as President of Licensing Executives Society International (LESI), and her time in that role is winding down as LESI’s annual meeting in Singapore approaches at the end of April. Our conversation, which took place April 8, 2025, focuses on intellectual property, globalization, supply chains, licensing and more.