Posts in IP News

This week in Other Barks & Bites: the Federal Circuit reverses an exceptionality determination after finding that the patent owner raised Section 101 arguments requiring more than a simple application of Myriad; the Seventh Circuit rules that copyright ownership to a compilation of unpublished psychotherapy articles cannot prevent the otherwise authorized publication of a single article included within the compilation; and more.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (CAFC) on Thursday affirmed a Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) ruling that held certain claims of a patent for network intrusion monitoring and detection unpatentable as obvious. The opinion was authored by Judge Chen. U.S. Patent No. 7,895,641 is owned by BT Americas (BTA). Palo Alto Networks, Inc. petitioned for inter partes review (IPR) of the ‘641 patent, and the PTAB ultimately determined claims 1–7 and 15–17 would have been obvious in view of two prior art references.

The Council for Innovation Promotion (C4IP) issued a statement Tuesday expressing concern about a rule recently proposed by the U.S. Department of the Treasury to enact the Comprehensive Outbound Investment National Security (COINS) Act, which was itself enacted as part of the Fiscal Year 2026 National Defense Authorization Act.

Several owners of Elvis Presley compositions filed a lawsuit against Anthropic on October 23 in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, alleging that the company copied copyrighted lyrics without authorization to train its Claude large language models (LLMs) and that Claude generated infringing versions of the songs. The complaint asserted claims for direct copyright infringement, circumvention of technological protection measures under Section 1201 of Title 17, and removal or alteration of copyright management information (CMI) under Section 1202.

The USPTO deserves some credit for recognizing that applicants may at times need an opportunity to explain technical improvements that examiners have failed to appreciate, but there is real risk associated with filing a SMED that should cause practitioners to pause rather than race forward without serious consideration. And despite some difference of opinion, we all agreed on an essential point: Filing a SMED should not be the first line of defense against an eligibility rejection; it should should be treated as a last resort. Filing a SMED requires serious consideration of the advantages, disadvantages, and alternatives. Examiner interviews, arguments grounded in the existing specification, appropriate claim amendments, and appeals all deserve careful consideration before ever adding sworn statements to the prosecution history. The question must be whether the declaration supplies something genuinely necessary to advance the case, and even then must be intentionally specific and narrow.

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce’s Global Innovation Policy Center released the first edition of its Trade in Unsafe Medicines Index today, a report prepared with Pugatch Consilium that benchmarks 12 economies on their propensity to contribute to trade in unsafe and illicit medicines and their ability to deter it. Eight of the 12 economies scored below 50%, and the overall mean score was 43.03%.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (CAFC) today affirmed the dismissal of a pro se patent owner’s claims against Live Nation, Ticketmaster, Major League Baseball and several law firms, concluding that the plaintiff waived her appellate arguments by failing to oppose the defendants’ dismissal motions in district court.

This week in Other Barks & Bites: SpaceX reportedly seeks to build nationwide wireless carrier through purchase of 80,000 cellular sites; a joint study to which the European Patent Office contributed recommends strengthening tech transfer offices across the EU; the Unified Patent Court’s Court of Appeal finds that printed Gucci leather products don’t infringe patent claims to methods of decorating leather; and more.

The European Union Intellectual Property Office (EUIPO) and the European Commission released a report today titled “EU Enforcement of Intellectual Property Rights” on results at the EU border and in the EU internal market in 2025. The report explained that “over 196 million counterfeit articles were detained at the EU border and in the EU internal market, with an estimated retail value of EUR 6.3 billion.” Detention volume rose over 67% from 2024, and the estimated value surpassed 2024 by almost 63%, which the report identifies as the “second consecutive all-time record” for value.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (CAFC) on Thursday denied two petitions for writ of mandamus arguing the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia abused its discretion in transferring three related patent infringement suits to the Northern District of Illinois.

Congress is considering a bill that would let patents on prescription drugs be rendered unenforceable over an honest paperwork error, even when the underlying invention is genuinely new, non-obvious, and valuable to patients. Supporters of the Medication Affordability and Patent Integrity Act (S. 2658), which the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee reported in July, say it will lower drug prices by closing what they describe as a loophole that drugmakers use to extend their monopolies.

Many intellectual property rights peacefully coexist because they apply to distinct aspects of a product. Issues can arise when intellectual property rights that expire and intellectual property rights that do not expire protect the same or overlapping features of the same product. One example is design patents and trade dress rights, both of which apply to non-functional ornamental features.

The U.S. Supreme Court issued an order on Monday in BMG Rights Management (US) LLC v. Vetter affirming the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit’s judgment granting a songwriter ownership of the worldwide copyright in “Double Shot (Of My Baby’s Love).” The Court entered the affirmance under 28 U.S.C. Section 2109, following a September 30 reply in which BMG Rights Management (US) LLC and the other petitioners urged the Court to grant certiorari and reverse.

Venable LLP’s Intellectual Property Group is seeking a mid-level associate with five to seven years of substantive U.S. trademark experience in a law firm setting to join our practice in Washington, D.C. Our team advises and represents clients across the full spectrum of trademark and brand protection law, including prosecution, clearance, enforcement, portfolio management, and proceedings before the Trademark Trial and Appeal Board (TTAB).