Posts Tagged: "technology"

A bipartisan, bicameral group of Congress members today reintroduced the “Nurture Originals, Foster Art, and Keep Entertainment Safe Act of 2026” (NO FAKES Act), a bill that would create a federal IP right to an individual’s voice and likeness. Senators Marsha Blackburn (R-TN), Chris Coons (D-DE), Thom Tillis (R-NC) and Amy Klobuchar (D-MN), joined Representatives Maria Salazar (R-FL) and Madeleine Dean (D-PA) to sponsor the bill.

Artificial intelligence has moved beyond the experimental phase in legal practice. The legal industry is no longer debating whether lawyers can or should use AI tools, or whether AI will affect the economics of law firm and in-house legal department operations. Those questions have been answered. AI is already reshaping how legal work is performed, how legal departments manage demand, how law firms are expected to price services, how patent teams analyze portfolios, and how clients evaluate outside counsel.

For years, design patent practitioners dealing with graphical user interfaces (GUIs) and icons have been shackled to the ghost of Ex parte Strijland. If you wanted to get a case through the USPTO for a GUI or an icon, you had to meticulously include a broken line depicting a display screen or monitor. Under the old MPEP 1504.01(a) regime, the effect of the GUI was treated essentially as surface ornamentation applied to that specific physical screen to satisfy the “article of manufacture” requirement under 35 U.S.C. § 171.

Artificial intelligence (AI) is moving faster than traditional intellectual property (IP) strategy was designed to handle. The issue is not simply speed, although speed is certainly part of the problem. The deeper challenge is that AI innovation does not fit neatly into the legacy IP operating model. The assets, development cycles, regulatory environment, and commercial pathways are all different. And the value drivers are increasingly distributed across a spectrum of AI-related intangible domains, which include patents, trade secrets, data rights, software architecture, licensing models, and customer contracts.

This week on IPWatchdog Unleashed, my conversation with Hilary Preston, partner at Vinson & Elkins and co-head of its intellectual property and technology litigation practice, underscores a fundamental shift underway in how sophisticated organizations approach intellectual property. What was once a reactive, litigation-centric discipline, is rapidly evolving into something far more strategic—an integrated function that sits at the intersection of technology, business, and risk management. Ultimately, what emerged from this discussion is a vision of IP practice that is far more integrated and strategic than the traditional model. It is a shift from courtroom to boardroom counselor—from reactive defense to proactive governance. For practitioners, this requires a broader skill set and a willingness to engage deeply with technology and business. For clients, it offers the promise of more effective risk management and better alignment between legal strategy and commercial objectives.

Welcome back to Cool AI Patents of the Month, where we highlight innovations that blur the line between science fiction and real-world engineering. Last month, we looked at AI-generated voice replicas, particularly in sports broadcasting. That concept is no longer theoretical. Major League Baseball players have reportedly entered into agreements enabling the creation of AI-driven digital avatars, allowing fans to engage directly with AI-generated versions of their favorite players. The takeaway is clear: personality and likeness are being productized. What once seemed futuristic is quickly becoming commercially relevant.

The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (UPSTO) announced today that it will be extending the Artificial Intelligence Search Automated Pilot Program (ASAP!) until June 1, 2026, to gather additional information and continue evaluating the program’s effectiveness. The Pilot was first announced in October 2025 and is meant to “evaluate the impact of sharing the results of an automated search prior to examination of an application.” 

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (CAFC) issued a precedential decision today in Teva Pharmaceuticals International GmbH v. Eli Lilly and Company, reversing the United States District Court for the District of Massachusetts’s grant of judgment as a matter of law (JMOL) of invalidity of Teva Pharmaceuticals International GmbH and Teva Pharmaceuticals USA, Inc.’s headache treatment patents. The district court found that the asserted claims were invalid for failing to satisfy both the written description and enablement requirements of 35 U.S.C. § 112, but the CAFC found the district court’s grant of JMOL improper on both counts. The opinion was authored by Judge Prost and joined by Judge Cunningham and District Judge Andrews.

While artificial intelligence (AI) companies have long maintained that copyright law poses a significant barrier to innovation, it’s getting harder for them to make that argument with a straight face. It was one thing to claim that early text-based chatbots were magical boxes that didn’t really depend on the copyrighted works used to train them—a pretense that doesn’t hold up under scrutiny. But it’s quite another to make such claims when their systems are spitting out nearly perfect audiovisual renditions of Disney’s copyrighted characters, including Buzz Lightyear from Toy Story, Darth Vader from Star Wars, and Elsa from Frozen. That’s what Midjourney was doing when Disney sued it for infringement, and it’s also what OpenAI was doing when it struck a licensing deal with Disney.

Although I am not an attorney, I have been deeply enmeshed in the patent process as an inventor for three decades. And I have grown an appreciation for your profession that is perhaps deeper than most folks’. The majority of my work over the past 30 years has been in AI and machine learning. And I want to share some thoughts with you today about how all of this intersects and how you, everyone in this room, are really the last line of defense that humanity has in maintaining what it means to be human. 

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.

I keep hearing the same thing from patent professionals across the industry—inside companies, inside law firms, and even from investors. Patent budgets are shrinking, expectations are rising, and nobody seems willing to admit what that combination actually means.

What does it mean to be a prolific inventor in an era of corporate retrenchment, weakened patent rights, and risk-averse innovation culture? This week on IPWatchdog Unleashed, I had the opportunity to explore that question with Fred Shelton—an engineer who has accumulated more than 3,000 patents over roughly two decades, primarily during his career at Johnson & Johnson. Shelton describes himself not as an IP professional, but as an engineer who “documents engineering through patents.” That distinction is more than semantic. It reflects a philosophy of invention that is structured, disciplined, and deeply contextual.

Welcome back to Cool AI Patents of the Month, where we spotlight inventive developments at the intersection of artificial intelligence (AI) and intellectual property. In this installment, we take a look at two standout innovations—one that could transform how we watch sports, and another that may reshape how our vehicles understand the road ahead. Both illustrate how quickly AI is integrating itself into our daily lives.