Eileen McDermott

Following the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office’s (USPTO’s) July 2026 proposal to require third-party requesters for ex parte reexamination (EPR) to identify all real parties in interest (RPIs), the 26 comments submitted to the Office reveal a sharp divide among the patent owners, tech companies, industry associations and individuals who weighed in. The comment period closed August 21, and the commenters included 17 organizations, associations or companies and 8 individuals (a duplicate comment was submitted by the Intellectual Property Owners Association (IPO).

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (CAFC) on Friday issued a precedential decision denying a number of inventors’ associations standing to sue the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) for failing to amend alleged inaccurate language on the cover of issued U.S patents. District Judge Rachel Kovner of the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of New York, sitting by designation, authored the precedential opinion of the court.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (CAFC) issued a precedential decision today, authored by Chief Judge Moore, first affirming a district court’s orders dismissing a patent infringement complaint without granting leave to amend and awarding attorney’s fees, and secondly, dismissing an appeal of attorney sanctions for lack of jurisdiction. VDDP, LLC sued Volkswagen Group of America, Inc. in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Texas, alleging infringement of its U.S. Patent No. 9,426,452, relating to “electrically controlled spectacles.”… The district court dismissed the case with prejudice under Rule 12(b)(6), denied the motion for leave to amend as futile, denied VDDP’s motion to amend the judgment under Rule 59(e), awarded Volkswagen $207,543.60 in attorney’s fees, and sanctioned VDDP’s counsel, William Peterson Ramey III, under 28 U.S.C. § 1927, holding him and VDDP jointly and severally liable for the attorney’s fees.

Former Deputy Director of the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO), Coke Morgan Stewart, has joined the Council for Innovation Promotion (C4IP) as President and CEO, effective today. Stewart most recently served first as Acting Director (January 20, 2025, through September 18, 2025) and then as Deputy Director (September 18, 2025, through July 31, 2026) of the USPTO, before announcing her departure mid-term last month. In an email sent to USPTO executive staff on July 27, Stewart informed the Office that she would be leaving the Office to return to the private sector.

A split U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (CAFC) today denied a request for rehearing or rehearing en banc of a decision issued in February of this year relating to the proper test for determining design patent infringement. In the February precedential decision, the court affirmed a district court’s grant of summary judgment of non-infringement to Armaid Company, Inc. that its massage product did not infringe Range of Motion Products LLC’s (RoM’s) design patent claims. The opinion was authored by Judge Cunningham and Chief Judge Moore delivered a dissent in which she claimed her court has caused “the legal frame of reference” in design patent law cases to become “askew.”