Posts in IP News

A new report that examines education at the leading U.S. business schools has found that more and better courses are being offered to students at graduate business programs about how intellectual property (IP) rights function in business, but not a single program requires an IP-related course be completed to obtain a degree.

This week on IPWatchdog Unleashed, I speak with Nancy Braman. Recorded before a live audience at IPWatchdog’s 2026 Women’s IP Forum, our conversation explores how practitioners create opportunities, develop professional relationships, and build the skills necessary to succeed in patent law. From taking PLI patent bar review course before law school, to attending Franklin Pierce Law School, to spending more than three years writing and researching for IPWatchdog and now litigating high-stakes patent and intellectual property disputes for life sciences and technology companies. She has already had quite the journey, and I sense it is really just beginning.

The American Apparel & Footwear Association (AAFA) submitted comments to the Office of the United States Trade Representative (USTR) on October 7, recommending that USTR include Facebook, Instagram, Alibaba.com, AliExpress, and DHgate in its 2026 Review of Notorious Markets for Counterfeiting and Piracy (NML) report. While Alibaba and DHgate platforms have been included on the list before, Facebook and Instagram have “avoided accountability” so far, according to the letter. 

This week in Other Barks & Bites: record quarterly profits reported by Samsung Electronics belie an AI chip shortage likely to last into 2028; a major American apparel industry organization calls for the inclusion of Meta’s Facebook and Instagram in the USTR’s Notorious Markets List; copyright advocates tell Australia’s Parliament that an opt-out framework for AI model training is not feasible; and more.

I am pleased to introduce “Postcard from WIPO,” a new occasional series for the U.S. intellectual property community. Having spent much of my career working on IP issues in the United States, including as Deputy Director of the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO), I know how important it is to understand what is happening in the international IP system. From Geneva, I now have a different vantage point on that work, and I would like to share it with you.

A defendant facing an action for infringement of an EU trademark may challenge the validity of that trademark by filing a counterclaim before the EU trademark court. But what happens if the defendant does not do so? Is the opportunity to challenge the trademark’s validity lost, or may the defendant later seek a declaration of invalidity from the European Union Intellectual Property Office (EUIPO)?

Today, the U.S. Copyright Office published a notice of inquiry (NOI) in the Federal Register soliciting public comment on issues related to music piracy threatening billions in U.S. domestic revenues generated by digital streaming. The Office’s NOI responds to a request into the prevalence of streaming fraud across the music industry issued by U.S. Representative Scott Fitzgerald (R-WI), who also voiced concerns about generative artificial intelligence’s (AI) impact on the music industry.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (CAFC) issued a decision today in In re Gamble affirming a Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) decision that sustained an examiner’s rejection of multiple claims of U.S. Patent Application No. 17/490,077 as indefinite under 35 U.S.C. Section 112(b). The CAFC concluded that Oliver Wendel Gamble, who represented himself, forfeited any substantive argument on indefiniteness before the Board and on appeal.

Following the U.S. Supreme Court’s denial of Judge Pauline Newman’s petition for certiorari in June, the Chief Justice of the United States has transferred Newman’s judicial misconduct case to the Eleventh Circuit Judicial Council. Newman has been asking for her case to be transferred for more than three years. According to an Eleventh Circuit Order published today, the Chief Justice transferred Newman’s complaint “and any pending or new complaints relating to the same subject matter” to the Eleventh Circuit Judicial Council on August 19, 2026.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (CAFC) issued an order Tuesday in In re Google LLC, granting a petition for a writ of mandamus and directing the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Texas (WDTX) to transfer a patent infringement case to the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California (NDCA). The CAFC concluded that “the decision to deny transfer here was patently erroneous.”

Taiyo, Nakajima & Kato, a top Japanese patent firm with a long history, is seeking a U.S. patent attorney to work at its main office in Tokyo, Japan. Qualified candidates will be licensed by the USPTO and at least one U.S. state bar, and will have 3-6 years of post-qualification experience filing and prosecuting U.S. patent applications and drafting opinions of counsel. A degree in electrical engineering, chemistry, or biotechnology is preferred, but significant experience in these areas will be considered in conjunction with other technical backgrounds. Japanese language ability, design application experience, litigation support, and previous work as local counsel for foreign firms are also desirable but not required.

This week on IPWatchdog Unleashed, I spoke with Fran Cruz and Marlene Valderrama. Recorded before a live audience following IPWatchdog’s Women’s IP Forum, our conversation explored how professionals build relationships that lead to business, career opportunities, and better ways of doing their jobs. Drawing on their perspectives at Juristat and Halliburton, respectively, Fran and Marlene returned to a fundamental point: earning someone’s attention begins with understanding what matters to them. That requires asking questions and actually listening.

Yesterday, the U.S. Supreme Court issued its first major omnibus order list of the October 2026 term, denying petitions for writ of certiorari in a series of intellectual property-related cases. These denials from the nation’s highest court leave in place contested rulings over the application of apportionment principles to damages in patent and trade secret cases. Other cert denials include appeals to IP-related claims barred under res judicata, including one petition arguing for a manifest injustice exception, and yet another challenge to the Section 101 patent-eligibility inquiry developed at the Federal Circuit.

In economic theory, corporate value creation can be attributed to many factors and conflicting preferences. Prioritizing different factors produces a set of different outcomes and the outcome that is seemingly most efficient becomes the accepted norm. Sometimes however, corporate actors rely on accepted business practices which, while taken in the pursuit of the most optimal outcome, facilitate market distortions. Hit by a compute-driven demand shock and faced with resource scarcity, Samsung, SK Hynix, and Micron have opted to allocate production capacity in a way that has exacerbated an industry- wide memory card supply shortage. But to fully understand why the price of hardware components and consumer electronic devices has been steadily surging, we must first start with Nvidia.

Carrie Hafeman, an independent inventor who has been fighting a years-long patent battle against Google and Microsoft, has filed a petition for rehearing of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit’s (CAFC’s) June 2026 precedential decision affirming Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) decisions invalidating all claims of three of her patents. Hafeman is pursuing her case pro se after her attorneys recently withdrew.