his week on Other Barks & Bites: the Sixth Circuit issued a ruling in favor of office furniture company MillerKnoll in a trademark case over the intellectual property rights to the Bubble Lamp; U.S. District Judge Jane Boyle issued a Section 101 ruling knocking out offline commerce transaction patent claims owned by Wolverine Barcode; the Federal Circuit found that the Patent Trial and Appeal Board did not violate the CAFC’s mandate on remand after the Board issued new findings on claim limitations disclosed by prior art; the European Union Intellectual Property Office announced that the agency received a record number of applications for EU trademarks during the first half of 2026; and more.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (CAFC), in a precedential decision, on Thursday affirmed a district court ruling that found certain claims of Wyeth LLC’s two patents for methods of cancer treatment invalid for lack of enablement. Wyeth sued AstraZeneca Pharmaceuticals in September 2021, alleging that AstraZeneca induced infringement of its U.S. Patents 10,603,314 and 10,596,162 “based on marketing, distribution, and sales of its irreversible EGFR inhibitor Tagrisso (osimertinib).”

This week, several amicus briefs were filed at the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit supporting defendant-appellees Amgen in an antitrust suit brought by rival pharmaceutical firm Sandoz, which is appealing the dismissal of its complaint by the Eastern District of Virginia. Amici, including former Federal Circuit Chief Judge Paul Michel, free market institute Washington Legal Foundation, and trade organizations representing the pharmaceutical industry, all strongly urge the Fourth Circuit to dismiss Sandoz’s attempt to circumvent adverse patent rulings with an overly broad antitrust theory that would disrupt the entire U.S. patent system.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (CAFC) issued a decision today in In re Magnolia Medical Technologies, Inc., affirming a Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) decision from an ex parte reexamination that found claim 1 of U.S. Patent 10,039,483 anticipated and therefore unpatentable.

Broad functional genus claiming was previously a standard strategy for innovators seeking IP protection for antibodies. Prior guidance from the USPTO, including the “newly characterized antigen” test, encouraged broad claiming of antibodies based upon their function alone. For decades, that effectively allowed innovators to claim much more than they in fact discovered in practice. In the wake of the Supreme Court’s Amgen decision, courts have adopted the reasoning articulated in Amgen to strike down functional genus antibody claims for lacking either enablement or written description.

A faith-technology company has done something the IP world should notice. Gloo — a Boulder, Colorado, firm that serves churches, ministries, and Christian universities, and now trades on the Nasdaq — built a benchmark it calls Flourishing AI Christian, or FAI-C. The finding is blunt: Today’s leading large language models, tested on questions of meaning, character, and faith, come up short. On a 100-point flourishing scale, the frontier models averaged 61. On the faith dimension, they scored worst of all.

Trademark law has traditionally protected the most recognizable aspects of a brand: names, logos, and slogans. Increasingly, however, companies are asking courts to protect something far less tangible, the overall identity consumers associate with a brand. Colors, product aesthetics, marketing campaigns, and even the timing of a product launch have become valuable commercial assets in their own right. The recently filed lawsuit between 7-Eleven and Nike illustrates how modern trademark disputes are moving beyond conventional source identifiers and into the realm of brand identity itself.

In any patent dispute, the strength of the patent still matters. But increasingly, it is not the only thing that matters—or even, in some cases, the thing that matters most. That means where a patent dispute takes place cannot be a tactical afterthought or viewed as a choice of federal district courts in the United States alone. This is true today more than ever because despite patents ostensibly being property—at least according to the Patent Act—which tribunal and which judges make the ultimate decisions affecting the patent often matter most of all because patents and patent enforcement have become driven by ideology and the type of fervor normally reserved highly emotionally charged discussions, like religion and politics.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (CAFC) issued a decision today in Dental Monitoring SAS v. Align Technology, Inc., affirming a district court ruling that found several patent claims covering deep learning based dental image analysis invalid as directed to ineligible subject matter under Section 101. Dental Monitoring SAS owns U.S. Patent 11,049,248 and U.S. Patent 10,755,409, both of which relate to dental arch image analysis. The ‘248 patent covers “a method for assessing the shape of an orthodontic aligner using a deep learning device,” while the ‘409 patent covers a method for acquiring and analyzing an image of a dental arch using the same type of device.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (CAFC) today denied a request for mandamus relief by Lambeth Magnetic Structures, LLC, who asked the CAFC to direct the  U.S. District Court for the Western District of Pennsylvania to vacate its order staying a patent infringement suit pending resolution of an ex parte reexamination (EPR) of the asserted patent claims.

The United States government, on behalf of President Donald Trump, abandoned its application to register the trademark BOARD OF PEACE on July 3, after filing an express abandonment, according to U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) documents. The application was a source of controversy earlier this year, when Representative Jamie Raskin (D-MD), Ranking Member of the House Judiciary Committee, sent a letter to USPTO Director John Squires pressing him to answer questions about the Office’s role in filing the trademark application on behalf of the Trump Administration.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (CAFC) issued a decision today in Linfo IP, LLC v. Trustpilot, Inc., dismissing an appeal brought by Linfo IP, LLC as moot. The dismissal followed Linfo and Trustpilot, Inc.’s settlement of their dispute while the appeal was still pending.

On July 2, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (CAFC) affirmed the dismissal  of Etison LLC d/b/a ClickFunnels’ patent infringement suit against HighLevel Inc., holding the disputed website creation patents claim ineligible subject matter under 35 U.S.C. § 101. While the CAFC found that the district court erred by treating a single claim as representative of all asserted claims without adequately addressing ClickFunnels’ argument that the two dependent claims at issue contained a distinct limitation,  the panel ultimately concluded that the error was harmless

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (CAFC) issued a precedential decision Thursday in TrackTime, LLC v. Amazon.com Services LLC, vacating a district court’s indefiniteness ruling on one TrackTime patent. It also affirmed a jury verdict of invalidity on a related patent asserted against Amazon.com Services LLC and Audible, Inc.

This week in Other Barks & Bites: the UK Supreme Court hears oral arguments in Apple’s appeal of a $502 million judgment setting a global 4G licensing rate with Optis Technology; the Federal Circuit remands a Delaware district court ruling invalidating TrackTime’s patents for reconsideration under intervening precedent on indefiniteness analysis from Dyfan v. Target Corp.; and more.