As discussed in my prior article, the growing adoption and sophistication of assistive AI tools for patent prosecution are paving the way for material business and career impacts, such as decreased prosecution revenue and reduced staffing over the long term. Despite these potential risks, practitioners and enterprises may experience widely differing outcomes due to their client mix, expertise, and capacity to navigate shifting winds to advantage.

In the latest episode of IP Innovators, host Steve Brachmann sits down with Drew McElligott, Counsel at Crowell & Moring, to explore how artificial intelligence (AI) is reshaping legal workflows from the inside of a major law firm. While much of the conversation around AI focuses on disruption, McElligott offers a grounded, practitioner-driven perspective: one of the most immediate and impactful changes is how patent attorneys begin drafting. As AI tools become more integrated into legal practice, they are redefining the early stages of patent drafting and eliminating one of the most persistent challenges in writing: the blank page.

In 2008, a medical device company I represented, Datascope Corporation, won a hard-fought victory at the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit. That court reversed a verdict of patent infringement rendered by a federal jury in Baltimore in a suit brought by Johns Hopkins University and its licensee against my client. Johns Hopkins Univ. v. Datascope Corp., 543 F.3d 1342 (Fed. Cir. 2008).

The U.S. District Court for the District of Delaware on Tuesday denied a motion for summary judgment in Cinemavault, Inc. v. Gameshow Network, LLC, allowing a trademark infringement and unfair competition lawsuit to proceed to trial. Judge Joel H. Slomsky rejected Gameshow Network, LLC’s arguments that Cinemavault, Inc. failed to continuously use its trademark, that Cinemavault, Inc. was judicially estopped from bringing a likelihood of confusion claim, and that the relevant Lapp factors precluded Cinemavault from establishing a likelihood of confusion between the two marks at issue.

Each year, companies invest significant financial resources building and maintaining patent portfolios. But instead of contributing to the bottom line, the patent portfolio often evolves into a growing cost center burdened by maintenance fees, prosecution expenses, and legal overhead. The patents protect some of the company’s products, and make nice plaques for the corporate hallways, but serve little other purpose. Patent monetization offers an opportunity to reverse this dynamic. Done correctly, it can transform dormant intellectual property into a durable revenue stream. Done poorly, it can create reputational risk, misaligned incentives, and wasted capital.

It is hardly a secret that corporate IP departments are under growing pressure to do more with less. Budgets are tightening, leadership increasingly expects patents to deliver measurable business value, and artificial intelligence is rapidly changing how patent work can be performed. What does this mean for the future of in-house patent teams—and for the law firms that support them? Our conversation explores several major trends shaping patent strategy today, including the shift toward quality over quantity in patent portfolios, the growing emphasis on maintenance fee pruning and portfolio discipline, and the evolving relationship between in-house counsel and outside patent law firms. We also examine how companies are using competitive intelligence, patent analytics, and emerging tools to guide filing strategy, manage costs, and identify licensing and enforcement opportunities. We also tackle one of the biggest questions facing the IP profession: What can AI realistically do for patent practitioners today—and what can’t it do yet?

Spurred by reports that House leaders are trying to fast-track a bill to separate the U.S. Copyright Office from the Library of Congress, a coalition of consumer rights, industry, open internet and library groups has again sent a letter to the House Committee on Administration urging it to consider the bill on the regular timeline to avoid “unintended consequences.” A full committee markup of the bill is scheduled for tomorrow, March 18,

Yesterday, U.S. Senators Marsha Blackburn (R-TN), Chairman of the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Privacy, Technology, and the Law, and Peter Welch (D-VT) sent a letter addressed to Liang Rubo, CEO of Chinese technology company ByteDance, urging the immediate shutdown of ByteDance’s video generation platform Seedance 2.0. Calling ByteDance’s recent pledges to respect copyright “a delay tactic,” the Senators join a growing chorus of copyright advocates raising alarms about rampant infringement being committed by users of Seedance and other generative artificial intelligence (AI) platforms.

Harrity & Harrity is seeking a motivated and detail-oriented Innovation Specialist in Patent Technology to join its growing team. This unique role sits at the exciting intersection of patent law, artificial intelligence, and software development. Reporting directly to the software development team leads, you will play a crucial role in shaping the AI-powered tools used by our patent professionals and clients. You’ll play a hands-on role in prompt engineering, tool testing, documentation, support, and customer onboarding, and you will be a key player in the transformation of patent practice through AI, enabling better client outcomes and defining best practices in a rapidly evolving field.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (CAFC) today issued a decision in Applications in Internet Time, LLC v. Salesforce, Inc., affirming a district court’s dismissal of AIT’s patent infringement suit against Salesforce for lack of constitutional standing. The court determined that the district court correctly concluded that Applications in Internet Time, LLC (AIT) had no exclusionary patent rights at the inception of the lawsuit. It also held that the district court did not abuse its discretion in denying equitable relief to cure the constitutional standing defect.

Last week, consumer electronics giant Samsung filed responses to requests for Director Review by patent owner Netlist in validity proceedings instituted at the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB). Netlist is contending that the trials should be dismissed because Samsung failed to identify all real parties in interest (RPIs) in the PTAB petitions challenging Netlist patent claims directed to dynamic random access memory (the ‘087 patent) and memory modules for reduced noise in signal transmissions (the ‘731 patent).

The New Civil Liberties Alliance (NCLA) has filed a petition for a writ of certiorari asking the U.S. Supreme Court to review its case against U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (CAFC) Chief Judge Kimberly Moore for what the NCLA dubs the “unlawful” removal of Newman from her duties on the court.

This week in Other Barks & Bites: the U.S. Department of Justice announces a six-figure settlement with a former U.S. Patent and Trademark Office patent examiner over conflict of interest allegations for the second time in two weeks; USPTO Director John Squires issues a memo establishing U.S.-based operations as a discretionary denial consideration for petitions at the Patent Trial and Appeal Board; and more.

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce’s Global Innovation Policy Center (GIPC) today released its 2026 International IP Index, which flagged concerning trends about the “growing erosion of IP leadership” among the world’s high-performing economies, according to the report’s authors. In particular, the report noted that scores in eight EU Member States have declined this year, although the top ten rankings remained the same from 2025. The United States was again number one, with a relatively stable score of 95.15% compared with last year’s 95.17%.

Lawyers for Civil Justice (LCJ) and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce Institute for Legal Reform (ILR) on March 10 submitted a rules suggestion to the Advisory Committee on Civil Rules and its Third-Party Litigation Funding (TPLF) Subcommittee, proposing an amendment to Federal Rule of Civil Procedure (FRCP) 26(a)(1)(A) to require mandatory disclosure of TPLF in federal civil litigation.