Online counterfeiting has become ubiquitous. A seller located anywhere in the world can create a digital storefront, copy a brand owner’s photographs and product descriptions, adopt a business name that reveals nothing, and begin selling into the United States before the brand owner even knows the account exists. If the seller is discovered and enforcement begins, the listing disappears, the money moves out of the country and beyond the practical reach of the court system, and a new account surfaces under a different name. Then the entire process repeats.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (CAFC) issued a decision today in In re Incept LLC, vacating and remanding a Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) decision that had affirmed an examiner’s rejection of a medical catheter patent application as obvious. Since the Board’s obviousness analysis relied on an incorrect construction of the claim term “flow barrier,” the CAFC declined to reach the underlying obviousness question and returned the case to the Board for further proceedings.

Inventors lost a champion this week. The sudden passing of Dan Brown, serial entrepreneur, 100+ patent holder, educator and policy activist, will leave a void. Dan was a vocal proponent of a fair intellectual property system, committed to building an equitable one for all inventors and creators.

Sources familiar with operations at the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) have told IPWatchdog that USPTO Director John Squires has informed the Administrative Patent Judges (APJs) on the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) that he will be relinquishing decision-making authority on which patent challenges to institute, returning the decision to the PTAB. 

Representative Darrell Issa introduced the American Copyright Protection Act (ACPA) on Monday, a bill aimed at creating an expedited judicial mechanism for copyright owners to obtain orders blocking access to certain foreign piracy sites. While the official text of the bill has not yet been published, several groups have responded based on their review of a draft of the bill that was circulated to stakeholders in May 2025.

A songwriter told the U.S. Supreme Court this week to reject an attempt by the four largest music companies in the world to reverse a Fifth Circuit ruling granting him all rights to the 1966 Swingin’ Medallions single, “Double Shot (Of My Baby’s Love).” The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit issued an opinion in January 2026 in Vetter v. Resnick, affirming the Middle District of Louisiana’s grant of summary judgment declaring that Cyril Vetter, co-author of “Double Shot,” and Vetter’s affiliated companies are the sole owners of the copyright to the song throughout the world.

This week on IPWatchdog Unleashed, I spoke with Steve Caltrider, Vice President and Chief Intellectual Property Officer at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, and a former General Patent Counsel at Eli Lilly. The discussion also examined patent quality and the role of examination. Caltrider’s view is that the best time to establish confidence in a patent is when the USPTO examines it—not years later through PTAB review or district court litigation, after investment decisions have already been made. He recognized the need for an error-correction mechanism, while cautioning that review should not become so extensive or unpredictable that it undermines the value of issued patents.

A coalition of 214 companies and organizations sent a letter on September 14 to Carolyn A. Dubay, Secretary of the Committee on Rules of Practice and Procedure at the Administrative Office of the United States Courts, urging the Advisory Committee on Civil Rules to amend the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure (FRCP) to require disclosure of nonparty litigation funders in federal civil litigation. Signatories included Amazon, Google, Microsoft, ExxonMobil, Meta, Ford, Anthropic, OpenAI, numerous insurers, pharmaceutical firms, and manufacturers.

In a precedential decision issued Monday, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (CAFC) vacated a patent infringement judgment against Nine Energy Service Inc., holding that the Western District of Texas court incorrectly construed two terms of NCS Multistage’s patent and that an earlier sale relied upon by NCS did not qualify as a public disclosure under the America Invents Act (AIA).

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (CAFC) issued a precedential decision today in TexasLDPC Inc. v. Broadcom Inc., reversing a district court’s dismissal of a patent and copyright infringement lawsuit brought by an exclusive licensee that had not joined the patent owner as a co-plaintiff. The court held that TexasLDPC Inc.’s license agreement with Texas A&M University (A&M) did not automatically terminate when TexasLDPC shifted its business to patent enforcement. The agreement conveyed “all substantial rights” in the asserted patents to TexasLDPC, making A&M “not otherwise a necessary party” under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 19.

On Friday, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit issued a ruling in AlterWAN, Inc. v. Amazon.com, Inc. affirming a stipulated final judgment of noninfringement entered by the District of Delaware and dismissing AlterWAN’s challenges to the district court’s construction of claims directed to wide area network (WAN) implementation. Dissenting to the majority opinion was U.S. District Judge Arun Subramanian, sitting by designation from the Southern District of New York, who took issue with the majority’s judgment resting on non-claim terms inferred as limitations from vague specification language and irrelevant prosecution history.

Congress should let provisional applications be renewable for an extra year, and then publish them if a nonprovisional is not filed. Filing a nonprovisional is a big deal for small businesses. In some cases the expense pays off because it lets inventors recover from infringers, while in others it does not pay off because the market never develops. Under today’s law, the decision is mostly all or nothing—spend large amounts of money on attorney and United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) fees, or compete in the market without protection.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (CAFC) issued a precedential decision Friday in Moskowitz Family LLC v. Globus Medical, Inc., affirming a district court’s grant of summary judgment of noninfringement, its construction of the claim term “universal,” and its denial of a motion for judgment as a matter of law (JMOL) of infringement.

This week in Other Barks & Bites: the Federal Circuit affirms the dismissal of a pro se inventor’s PTA lawsuit due to district court restrictions against electronic filings; the United States’ top federal cybersecurity agency warns that the Chinese government may be aiding domestic AI companies in industrial-scale distillation efforts; the annual Global Innovation Index shows that China is outpacing the U.S. in terms of top innovation clusters; and more.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (CAFC) issued a decision today in Guymon v. Squires, affirming a decision from the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia dismissing with prejudice an inventor’s lawsuit challenging a patent term adjustment (PTA) determination. Circuit Judge Hughes wrote for the court, joined by Chief Judge Moore and Circuit Judge Lourie, and rejected each of the three arguments that Guymon raised on appeal.