IPWatchdog.com | Patents & Intellectual Property Law

CAFC Reverses $9.1 Billion Exceptionality Award, Holding Myriad Did Not Foreclose Patent Owner’s 101 Argument

Eileen McDermott — Fri, 30 Oct 2026 18:15:48 +0000

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (CAFC) on Friday reversed a district court’s award of attorneys’ fees to Elysium Health, Inc., holding that the lower court erred in assessing the substantive strength of ChromaDex’s Section 101 position. The appeal is rooted in the CAFC’s 2023 decision affirming the U.S. District Court for the District of Delaware’s grant of summary judgment for Elysium Health that the asserted claims of ChromaDex’s patent on an isolated form of vitamin B3 were directed to unpatentable subject matter under Section 101.

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Other Barks & Bites for Friday, October 30: CAFC Reverses Attorney’s Fee Award in Section 101 Case; IFFRO Releases Study on AI’s Negative Impacts on Creators; and Fifth Circuit Reverses Patent Agreement Production Order to UPC

Steve Brachmann — Fri, 30 Oct 2026 16:15:45 +0000

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more than a simple application of Myriad; the Seventh Circuit rules that copyright ownership to a compilation of unpublished psychotherapy articles cannot prevent the otherwise authorized publication of a single article included within the compilation; and more.

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Federal Circuit Affirms PTAB’s Unpatentability Finding for Palo Alto Networks

Eileen McDermott — Thu, 29 Oct 2026 16:45:22 +0000

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.

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Your Product Works: Do You Have the Rights to Commercialize It?

Jasmine Parker — Thu, 29 Oct 2026 15:15:58 +0000

The demo works. A potential customer is interested. Then the contract arrives, asking the company to confirm that it has the rights necessary to provide the product, protect customer information, and stand behind an infringement claim. The company’s customer commitments must match the rights it actually holds. A working demo alone cannot establish that match.

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Viral, Valuable, and Potentially Costly: Who Owns Memes?

David (Dash) Cole — Thu, 29 Oct 2026 12:15:27 +0000

A meme can travel from a private joke to a global advertising campaign before its creator – or the owner of the image behind it – has time to object. Coined by Richard Dawkins in 1976 to describe a unit of cultural transmission that replicates and mutates as it spreads, “memes” include reaction GIFs, catchphrases, and familiar templates such as “Distracted Boyfriend” and “Surprised Pikachu.” For brands and creators, that speed and reach can be irresistible: the right meme, deployed at the right moment, can reach millions within hours.

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Federal Circuit Affirms Section 101 Rejection of Pro Se Applicant’s Bartering Method Claims

Rose Esfandiari — Wed, 28 Oct 2026 20:36:12 +0000

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (CAFC) issued a decision today in In re Wenkman affirming a Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) decision that upheld the rejection of all pending claims in a pro se applicant’s patent application directed to a computer-implemented method for bartering groceries and other goods for silver and gold. The CAFC agreed with the Board that the claims are directed to an abstract idea and lack an inventive concept under 35 U.S.C. Section 101.

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C4IP Urges Treasury to Reconsider Proposed Rule to Extend COINS Act Investment Restrictions to Biotech

Eileen McDermott — Wed, 28 Oct 2026 17:15:58 +0000

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.

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Executable Knowledge Artifacts and the Law: The Problem and a Framework

Jeffrey Cobia — Wed, 28 Oct 2026 15:15:23 +0000

For most of professional history, experience could not be separated from the professional who acquired it. Forms, manuals, and software captured portions of professional judgment, but the judgment itself remained human. That practical limitation preserved two distinctions the law depends on: the distinction between an employer’s property and an employee’s knowledge and skill, and the distinction between one client’s confidences and the next client’s matter. However, modern artificial intelligence (AI) removes this limitation.

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Rights Holders of Elvis Compositions File Suit Against Anthropic Over AI Training and Lyrics Output

Rose Esfandiari — Wed, 28 Oct 2026 12:15:20 +0000

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.

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USPTO 101: Understanding the Risks of Subject Matter Eligibility Declarations | IPWatchdog Unleashed

Gene Quinn — Tue, 27 Oct 2026 20:15:53 +0000

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.

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Inventor Advocacy Groups File Amici Briefs Supporting Centripetal’s Claim Construction Challenge at SCOTUS

Steve Brachmann — Tue, 27 Oct 2026 18:15:27 +0000

Last week, the entrepreneur advocacy organization Alliance for U.S. Startups and Inventors for Jobs (USIJ) filed an amicus brief in support of the petition for writ of certiorari before the U.S. Supreme Court filed by patent owner Centripetal Networks challenging late changes to claim construction wrought by the district court without notice or opportunity to be heard in its patent infringement case against Cisco Systems. The USIJ’s filing follows one week after inventor advocacy group US Inventor filed its own amicus brief in support of Centripetal’s petition, arguing that a modest remedy to the deprivation of Centripetal’s due process rights would improve fairness for both patent owners and accused infringers alike.

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U.S. Chamber Index Finds 8 of 12 Sampled Economies Score Below 50% in Benchmark of Trade in Unsafe Medicines

Rose Esfandiari — Mon, 26 Oct 2026 21:15:45 +0000

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%.

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CAFC Affirms Ticketing Companies’ Motions to Dismiss Due to Pro Se Plaintiff’s Failure to Timely Oppose

Eileen McDermott — Mon, 26 Oct 2026 18:15:40 +0000

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.

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Understanding the Entire Market Value Rule: Legal Foundations and Evolution

Ngoc Ngo — Mon, 26 Oct 2026 14:15:33 +0000

In patent damages, apportionment reflects the fundamental principle that a patentee may recover only the value attributable to the patented invention, not the value of unpatented features or components. In practice, this means that damages must be tied to the incremental contribution of the patented technology to the accused product. The entire market value rule (EMVR) is a doctrine in patent damages, in particular, reasonable royalty damages, that operates as a narrow “exception” to the apportionment principle.

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A Winning Combination: Recent Decisions Signal Strengthened Protectability of Compilation and Combination Trade Secrets

Joseph F. Ecker — Sun, 25 Oct 2026 16:15:40 +0000

For companies in many industries, their most valuable trade secrets reside not in a single formula or document, but in years of accumulated data, coordinated processes, and combinations of technical and commercial information from various internal sources. Engineering know-how (including negative know-how), integrated software features, and customer databases can reflect years of investment and work effort and give competitors a shortcut if acquired improperly and used. Compilation and combination trade secret protection helps safeguard that collective value, even when some individual components are publicly known or unprotectable standing alone.

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