Intellectual property law cases
The Federal Circuit held that inventor-advocacy groups lacked organizational and associational standing to challenge the USPTO’s description of a patent’s right to exclude.
The England and Wales Court of Appeal dismissed an appeal by Altana Wealth and Brevent Advisory, upholding the High Court’s finding that they misused Illiquidx’s confidential information—a strategy for creating a sanctions-compliant Venezuelan debt fund—when they launched a competing fund after their joint venture collapsed.
The Fourth Circuit vacated a practice-bar suspension imposed on a Womble Bond attorney in a cross-border trademark and trade-secret case, holding that civil contempt requires clear and convincing evidence of harm from the specific contemnor’s noncompliance.
A UK Intellectual Property Enterprise Court judge dismisses all trademark infringement and passing-off claims by easyGroup (the entity behind easyJet, easyHotel, and related brands) against bathroom retailer Easy Bathrooms, ruling that the claimant failed to prove a legally recognisable “family of marks” and that 13 years of market coexistence demonstrated no consumer confusion.
The Federal Circuit affirmed dismissal of a pro se inventor’s civil rights and tort claims against the USPTO, holding that disagreement with patent examination decisions cannot be recast as record falsification or a constitutional violation.
Director John Squires’s June 22, 2026 precedential order extends the Director Review request window from 14 to 30 days, defines three categories of “exceptional circumstances” warranting further extensions, and terminates three IPRs where district courts had already found the challenged claims invalid under § 101.
A federal jury became the first in history to hold a pharmaceutical company liable for an anticompetitive pay-for-delay reverse-payment settlement, awarding $885 million in single damages—automatically trebled to more than $2.6 billion—against Takeda Pharmaceuticals for delaying generic competition for its IBS drug Amitiza, thirteen years after the Supreme Court’s FTC v. Actavis decision opened the door to such claims.
A Maryland federal judge ruled that a competitor’s published research report criticizing an ad verification company’s bot detection services may constitute ‘commercial advertising or promotion’ under the Lanham Act, allowing false advertising and defamation claims to proceed.
After announcing 30,000 layoffs, Oracle secures a temporary restraining order barring a recently separated sales employee from disclosing trade secrets he had threatened to sell to the “highest bidder” absent an “unreasonable” fee. A primer on DTSA TRO practice in the RIF era.
The Federal Circuit affirmed the TTAB dismissal of cigar maker Fuente Marketing Ltd.s opposition to a vape-pen design mark, holding that despite overlapping goods and channels, the distinct commercial impression of Vaporous Technologies stick-figure design mark defeated likelihood of confusion with Fuentes standard-character X marks.
A Seattle federal jury returned a verdict for Valve Corporation on every count, finding inventor Leigh Rothschild and his affiliated entities and counsel violated Washington’s Patent Troll Prevention Act, breached a 2016 settlement and license, and that the asserted patent claim was obvious — in what may be the first jury verdict ever rendered under a state anti-patent-trolling statute.