IPWatchdog.com | Patents & Intellectual Property Law

USPTO Proposes Rule to Require Statement of RPIs for All Ex Parte Reexam Requests

Eileen McDermott — Wed, 22 Jul 2026 17:15:12 +0000

The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) today published a Federal Register Notice proposing to amend the rules of practice to require that third-party requests for ex parte reexamination of a patent must include a statement identifying all real-parties-in-interest (RPIs) to the proceeding. According to the proposed rule, statements identifying RPIs would be kept confidential upon request and “would provide the Office with a mechanism to evaluate statutory estoppel provisions” as well as “enhance the Office's ability to respond to false certifications, misrepresentations, and fraud.”

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Reverse Engineering, ‘Readily Ascertainable’, and the Burden of Proof: Lessons from the Comet Technologies Decision

Peter J. Toren — Wed, 22 Jul 2026 16:15:05 +0000

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit in Comet Technologies USA, Inc. v. XP Power, LLC, overturned Comet Technologies' $40 million trade secret verdict against XP Power and ordered a new trial, finding that the district court erroneously instructed the jury that the defendant bore the burden of proving that Comet's trade secrets were readily ascertainable by proper means. The court held that the error was not harmless because the instructions were not accurate as a whole, and nothing in the jury's verdict shed light on how it would have ruled under a correct instruction. The case is notable both for clarifying what "readily ascertainable" means and for spotlighting a burden-of-proof distinction between the Defend Trade Secrets Act (DTSA) and the California Uniform Trade Secrets Act (CUTSA) that practitioners should not overlook.

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Federal Circuit Affirms Dissolution of Preliminary Injunction in Split Decision Over Foldable Fan Design Patent

Rose Esfandiari — Wed, 22 Jul 2026 14:15:13 +0000

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (CAFC) issued a decision today affirming a district court’s dissolution of a preliminary injunction (PI) and denial of a temporary restraining order (TRO) in a Schedule A design patent dispute over foldable fans. Circuit Judge Hughes wrote for the majority, joined by Circuit Judge Prost, while Circuit Judge Stoll dissented from the portion of the opinion addressing the merits of the design patent analysis.

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Apple Wins at CAFC Due to PTAB’s Erroneous Reading of Speech Recognition Patent Claims

Eileen McDermott — Tue, 21 Jul 2026 19:15:16 +0000

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (CAFC) on Tuesday vacated and remanded a decision for a patent owner against Apple, concluding that the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) made several errors in finding the claims of the speech recognition patent at issue were not shown to be unpatentable. Zentian Ltd. owns U.S. Patent No. 10,839,789, which is titled “Speech recognition circuit and method.” Apple petitioned for inter partes review (IPR) of multiple claims of the patent, arguing in relevant part that “claim 1 was obvious over prior art reference U.S. Patent No. 5,819,222 (“Smyth”) or the combination of Smyth and U.S. Patent No. 6,832,194 (“Mozer”) and that claim 29 was obvious over Smyth, Mozer, and several other references.”

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Seizing the Secret Sauce: How Generative AI is Breaking Government Contracting and IP Law

Simon Maxwell — Tue, 21 Jul 2026 17:15:41 +0000

As government contractors rapidly integrate LLMs and generative AI into their operations, regulators are scrambling to adapt to shifting data ownership requirements. The General Services Administration (GSA) recently proposed a new GSAR clause (552.239–7001) to standardize AI procurement, and the current draft has been met with widespread industry criticism. By asserting expansive government ownership over “data outputs” and “custom development,” the proposed rule inadvertently exposes a fault line between government data protection and commercial IP rights.

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Federal Circuit Vacates Summary Judgment in Treadmill Patent Dispute, Finding Claim Construction Too Narrow

Rose Esfandiari — Tue, 21 Jul 2026 16:15:37 +0000

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (CAFC) issued a decision today in Woodway USA, Inc. v. LifeCore Fitness, Inc., vacating a grant of summary judgment of noninfringement in favor of LifeCore Fitness, doing business as Assault Fitness. The court found that the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of California relied on an overly restrictive claim construction, vacating and remanding the decision for further proceedings.

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Patent Damages After Rule 702: Will Your Expert Survive Daubert? | IPWatchdog Unleashed

Gene Quinn — Mon, 20 Jul 2026 21:06:10 +0000

Recent amendments to Federal Rule of Evidence 702 did not invent the trial judge’s gatekeeping obligation, nor did they transform economic analysis. They did, however, sharpen the focus on the burden of establishing admissibility and whether an expert has reliably applied a valid methodology to the facts. Combined with the Federal Circuit’s increasingly demanding review of patent damages opinions, the practical message is unmistakable: the economic case must be engineered from the beginning, or you will surely suffer the consequences only after it is too late.

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Congress Said No to Stolen Trademarks; The USPTO Said Yes

Kyle Vallecillo — Mon, 20 Jul 2026 18:15:59 +0000

On December 31, 1959, Calixto Lopez led armed men into the Arechabala family’s rum distillery in Cárdenas, Cuba. The family had made rum there since 1878, building Havana Club into a brand whose English name reflected its success in the U.S. market. According to testimony Ramón Arechabala gave the Senate Judiciary Committee in 2004, Lopez pointed a machine gun at him and announced he was taking over as “Pepe,” the nickname of the company’s president and Ramón’s uncle. The family’s rum business now belonged to the Cuban government.

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Federal Circuit Affirms PTAB, Rejects Narrow Reading of ‘Running Surface’ in Treadmill Patent Dispute

Rachel Mount — Mon, 20 Jul 2026 14:15:47 +0000

On Friday, the Federal Circuit affirmed a Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) decision invalidating claims of Woodway’s treadmill patent after rejecting the patentee’s central argument that the Board had improperly construed the claim term ‘running surface.’

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Enanta v. Pfizer is Not About a Typo: It is About Possession of the Invention

Reid Willis — Sun, 19 Jul 2026 16:15:43 +0000

Enanta Pharmaceuticals v. Pfizer has been widely characterized as a case that turns on the acceptance or rejection of an alleged typographical error in a provisional patent application. That characterization is inaccurate. The alleged typographical error is a distraction that obscures the fact that the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit analyzed the case under the wrong legal framework. Properly understood, Enanta is not about a typo at all; rather, the dispositive question is whether the inventors possessed the invention prior to the public disclosure of the allegedly infringing compound.

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Other Barks & Bites for Friday, July 17: CJEU Says Commercial Partnership May Make Google Liable for Gambling Ads; CAFC Corrects CFC on Book of Wisdom; Tillis Indicates PERA Tweaks

Steve Brachmann — Fri, 17 Jul 2026 18:15:26 +0000

This week in Other Barks & Bites: Senator Thom Tillis (R-NC) indicates that the Patent Eligibility Restoration Act’s language could be changed to address concerns about gene patents; the Seventh Circuit says that Teva plausibly alleged that Eli Lilly breached the terms of a Hatch-Waxman settlemen; and more.

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Federal Circuit Partially Vacates Court of Federal Claims’ Assessment of Copyright Award

Eileen McDermott — Thu, 16 Jul 2026 20:38:12 +0000

In a precedential decision authored by Judge Hughes on Thursday, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (CAFC) vacated-in-part and remanded a decision of the Court of Federal Claims that had awarded 4DD Holdings, LLC, and T4 Data Group, LLC $12,683,065.86 for the U.S. government’s infringement of their copyrighted software TETRA®. 4DD sued the Department of Defense (DOD) and the Department of Veterans Affairs (DVA) for infringement of its copyrighted software, TETRA, which served as an interoperability solution for military healthcare records stored by the two agencies in separate databases (dubbed the “Defense Medical Information Exchange (DMIX) program).

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CAFC Affirms Two PTAB Obviousness Rulings in Canon Printhead Patent Disputes

Rose Esfandiari — Thu, 16 Jul 2026 18:15:32 +0000

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (CAFC) issued two decisions today affirming Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) final written decisions that found claims of three patents owned by Slingshot Printing LLC unpatentable as obvious. The rulings, issued in Slingshot Printing LLC v. Canon U.S.A., Inc., followed a set of inter partes review (IPR) proceedings that Canon U.S.A., Inc. and Canon Inc. brought against Slingshot’s printhead patents.

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The IP Behind the Putter: Golf’s New Intellectual Property Race

Misha Solodovnikov — Thu, 16 Jul 2026 15:39:20 +0000

When the world's best golfers descend on Royal Birkdale in Southport, England, for the 154th Open Championship, they arrive at golf's oldest major — the tournament that has defined the sport since 1860. Played on the windswept links where the game forged its traditions, The Open has always celebrated history. But this year, it also marks the arrival of something entirely new.

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China Figures Prominently in WIPO Report Showing Generative AI Patent Activity Tripling in Past Two Years

Steve Brachmann — Wed, 15 Jul 2026 21:25:21 +0000

Yesterday, the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) published a report on the global patent landscape for generative artificial intelligence (AI) technologies showing that newly published patent families in the sector increased more during 2024 and 2025 combined than the preceding decade. While the United States has enjoyed greater annual growth rates in published patent families in the sector, six of the top 10 patenting entities are located in China, underscoring the dominant position that country is securing in an incredibly valuable and critical sector of emerging technology.

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