Posts in Technology & Innovation

On April 30, the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative (USTR) released this year’s Special 301 Report, which surveys the effectiveness of intellectual property (IP) rights and enforcement abroad and identifies foreign nations where IP protections are uncertain or disregarded. The 2026 report marks the first time in 13 years that a Priority Foreign Country (PFC) has been named, with Vietnam being identified as a PFC for persistent failures to address several long-standing IP concerns. The USTR has also added the European Union (EU) to the Special 301 Report’s Watch List, the first time since 2006 that the continental government has been identified for IP-related concerns in addition to individual European nations.

The University of North Carolina at Charlotte brought together leaders from government, academia, industry, and the defense community for its 2026 Invention of the Year Awards, an evening that showcased the university’s growing role as a national engine of innovation, commercialization, and technological impact.

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.

The World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) established World IP Day to commemorate April 26, 1970, the date the WIPO Convention officially took effect. Each year, the occasion serves as a global reminder of the role that intellectual property plays in encouraging innovation and creativity. This year, the World IP Day theme is “IP and Sports Ready, Set, Innovate,” recognizing the increasingly complex relationship between intellectual property rights and the multibillion-dollar global sports industry.

China was not the only actor being scrutinized today during a full Senate Judiciary Committee hearing, titled “Stealth Stealing: China’s Ongoing Theft of U.S. Innovation.”  Senator Thom Tillis (R-NC) stood in for Senator Chuck Grassley (R-IA) as Chair and opened the hearing with a warning that, in addition to its blatant IP theft—which is estimated to cost the United States between $400 billion and $600 billion per year—China is more recently evolving from “imitator to innovator.” “The United States must overcome its historic and ideological views that China is unable to innovate,” Tillis said.

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.

Today, the Council for Innovation Promotion (C4IP) published the third edition of its Congressional Innovation Scorecard, which provides a measure of each lawmaker in the U.S. Congress in terms of their impact on the nation’s intellectual property (IP) system. Although this year’s scorecard acknowledges higher numbers of pro-copyright bills introduced into Congress, it concludes that members of Congress are still failing to engage fully and effectively on national IP issues to the detriment of America’s future as an innovation leader.

The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (UPSTO) announced today that it will be extending the Artificial Intelligence Search Automated Pilot Program (ASAP!) until June 1, 2026, to gather additional information and continue evaluating the program’s effectiveness. The Pilot was first announced in October 2025 and is meant to “evaluate the impact of sharing the results of an automated search prior to examination of an application.” 

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.

Today, the European Union Intellectual Property Office (EUIPO) published a study exploring challenges faced by EU small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in obtaining financing by offering intellectual property (IP) as collateral. Set against the backdrop of the EU’s recently launched Savings and Investment Union (SIU) program, the EUIPO’s study identifies several structural barriers preventing SMEs from obtaining IP-backed financing and concludes with a series of policy recommendations designed to address the SME credit gap and unlock tremendous economic value for the wider EU market.

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.

A March 27, 2026, petition filed by Security First Innovations (SFI) does more than challenge a single reexamination proceeding—it shines a spotlight on a structural vulnerability in how post-grant review is functioning in practice. At its core, the filing argues that the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) is allowing what amounts to a procedural end-run around the statute, which is supposed to streamline post-grant challenges and lead to estoppel if the patent owner prevails.

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:

Yesterday, the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) filed a statement of interest (SOI) in an ongoing patent infringement case between consumer electronics giant Samsung and memory systems developer Netlist, which includes counterclaims by Samsung for violations of U.S. antitrust law. The SOI reiterates arguments made by the DOJ in other litigation involving standard essential patents (SEPs), asking the court to render its decision on Samsung’s antitrust claims in accordance with the fact that inclusion in a technical standard does not create a presumption that patent rights create market power.

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.