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July 17, 2026
SAN FRANCISCO — A split Ninth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals panel affirmed an Arizona federal judge’s decision to dismiss a pro se plaintiff-appellant’s challenge to a transfer of his domain “airbnbseo.com” to Airbnb Inc., with the majority agreeing that the man’s domain was confusingly similar to Airbnb’s trademark, while a dissenting judge opined that the confusing similarity analysis should not have been resolved on a motion to dismiss.
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July 17, 2026
ORLANDO, Fla. — After what a Florida federal judge called “five-and-a-half years of abusive litigation” in a trademark row over virtual schooling trademarks, the judge awarded more than $1.3 million in Rule 11 sanctions to the defendant school entity after the plaintiff school entity continued to pursue nationwide trademark damages for several months in 2023 after discovery failed to produce supporting evidence.
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July 17, 2026
WASHINGTON, D.C. — In a pair of July 16 opinions, a Federal Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals panel affirmed the U.S. Patent Trial and Appeal Board’s (PTAB) finding that claims of multiple patents describing a chip for use in printers were unpatentable as obvious, seeing no error in PTAB’s construction of certain claims, its motivation-to-combine analysis or other challenged elements of its decision.
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July 17, 2026
LOS ANGELES — A federal judge in California granted an artificial intelligence study materials company summary judgment on direct and vicarious copyright, trade dress and trademark and other claims, finding that it was merely a passive entity with respect to its users’ uploading of copyrighted materials.
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July 16, 2026
NEW YORK — A Second Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals panel on July 15 affirmed a New York federal judge’s denial of a plaintiff-appellant biopharmaceutical company’s motion to vacate or modify a $16.5 million arbitral award in a licensing dispute over an expired patent covering a multiple sclerosis drug; the panel said the plaintiff-appellant “slept on its right” by voluntarily making postexpiration payments to the patent holder.
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July 16, 2026
WASHINGTON, D.C. — A Federal Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals panel on July 15 affirmed a U.S. Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) determination that a technology company failed to show that patent claims describing a biometric technology device were unpatentable as obvious; the panel rejected the appellant company’s contention that PTAB wrongly construed claim phrase “biometric signal.”
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July 16, 2026
NEW YORK — For two years, OpenAI entities misled plaintiffs and the court about the ability to search training data and ChatGPT outputs for plaintiffs’ copyrighted material and destroyed other evidence, the reality of which came to light only during a court-ordered second deposition of the defendants’ corporate representative, news plaintiffs say in asking the federal judge in New York overseeing multidistrict copyright litigation to impose sanctions.
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July 15, 2026
WASHINGTON, D.C. — A Federal Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals panel vacated a decision from the U.S. Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) that Google LLC failed to show that a technology company’s patent was invalid as obvious, holding that PTAB adopted a claim construction without allowing Google a meaningful opportunity to respond when considering a patent describing voice-controlled web browsing.
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July 15, 2026
DENVER — A 10th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals panel in a July 14 opinion partly reversed a Kansas federal judge’s dismissal of a putative class action Lanham Act false advertising dispute between two pet food manufacturers, holding that the plaintiff-appellant had plausibly alleged at the pleading stage that the defendant-appellee had made some statements that were commercial speech that was false.
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July 14, 2026
RICHMOND, Va. — In a pair of opinions, a Fourth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals panel upheld a North Carolina federal judge’s preliminary injunction against a Dutch software company accused of stealing a North Carolina software company’s branding, code and trade secrets because the Dutch entity targeted United States commercial conduct but vacated a civil contempt sanction against the Dutch company’s attorney because the plaintiff company failed to show that it was harmed by noncompliance with a court order.
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July 14, 2026
WASHINGTON, D.C. — In a July 13 opinion, a Federal Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals panel reversed an Ohio federal judge’s grant of a preliminary injunction in a dispute concerning a patent on a rolling insulated door; the panel held that the accused product raised substantial questions of noninfringement and that the plaintiff-appellee entities failed to prove likely irreparable harm.
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July 13, 2026
LOS ANGELES — A California federal judge dismissed with prejudice a music technology company’s patent infringement complaint against musical instrument company Roland Corp. and its U.S. subsidiary, finding that the plaintiff company’s patent on an electronic tuning device is directed at patent-ineligible concepts because it uses generic components to collect and analyze musical information.
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July 13, 2026
WASHINGTON, D.C. — A Federal Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals panel revived a technology company’s patent infringement claims related to one of two patents it asserted against Amazon.com Services LLC and a related entity, vacating a Delaware federal judge’s finding that the plaintiff-appellant’s patent was invalid as indefinite because a precedential Federal Circuit ruling issued after the judge’s decision warrants further analysis of the issue.
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July 10, 2026
WASHINGTON, D.C. — A Federal Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals panel on July 9 upheld a U.S. Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) decision affirming an examiner’s rejection of a claim of a medical technology company’s patent describing a blood sample collection device; the panel agreed with the finding that prior art anticipated the claim, rendering it unpatentable.
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July 10, 2026
WASHINGTON, D.C. — A Federal Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals panel on July 9 saw no error in a Delaware federal judge’s decision to grant judgment as a matter of law (JMOL) on invalidity as to multiple patent claims asserted by a biopharmaceutical company that accused AstraZeneca Pharmaceuticals LP and a related entity of infringing its cancer treatment patents; the panel agreed with the judge that the asserted patents disclosed only broad projected ranges of dosages without clearly explaining how to determine a therapeutic dosage.
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July 09, 2026
CINCINNATI — A Sixth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals panel affirmed a Michigan federal judge’s grant of summary judgment in favor of a furniture company, agreeing with the judge’s determination that a royalty agreement allowed the company to use and own trademarked designs and names related to creations from influential modernist designer George Nelson.
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July 08, 2026
WASHINGTON, D.C. — A Federal Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals panel on July 7 rejected a magnetic technology company’s petition for a writ of mandamus seeking an order to stay a Pennsylvania federal judge’s holding that stayed a patent infringement action while parallel proceedings continue before the U.S. Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB); the panel found the company failed to show a clear right to undoing the stay.
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July 08, 2026
WASHINGTON, D.C. — A Federal Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals panel on July 7 affirmed a California federal judge’s holding that a dental technology plaintiff-appellant company’s patents describing the use of machine learning technology in a dental imaging tool were directed at patent-ineligible abstract concepts.
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July 07, 2026
FORT PIERCE, Fla. — A federal judge in Florida on July 6 dismissed with prejudice a pro se plaintiff’s copyright infringement claims against pop singer Taylor Swift and related entities, finding that any alleged overlaps between the plaintiff’s poetry and Swift’s lyrics were unprotectable ideas, themes, metaphors, words and short phrases, and that the complaint still did not plausibly plead unlawful copying.
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July 07, 2026
WASHINGTON, D.C. — In a July 6 ruling, a Federal Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals panel said that a settlement agreement in a patent infringement dispute mooted the plaintiff-appellant’s appeal of a New York federal judge’s finding that the patent claims at issue were invalid as abstract.
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July 07, 2026
WASHINGTON, D.C. — A Federal Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals panel affirmed a decision from the U.S. Trademark Trial and Appeal Board (TTAB) that upheld an examiner’s refusal to register marks on the phrase “Mon Ami” for pet treats; the panel found that substantial evidence supported the finding that the proposed mark was too similar to a previously registered mark that also related to pet food.
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July 06, 2026
SEATTLE — In an effort to obtain training data for its artificial intelligence, Amazon.com Inc. violated the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) by evading technological measures designed to prevent the scraping and downloading of copyright-protected online works, a trio of content creators say in an amended complaint seeking to represent a class of YouTube creators in a federal court in Washington.
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July 02, 2026
WASHINGTON, D.C. — The U.S. Supreme Court denied a petition for a writ of certiorari filed by a patent-holding company that sought review of a Federal Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals decision affirming a Texas federal judge’s grant of attorney fees to a defendant after dismissing the petitioner plaintiff’s patent infringement complaint.
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July 02, 2026
WASHINGTON, D.C. — The U.S. Supreme Court on June 29 denied an inventor’s petition for a writ of certiorari in which he argued that the Federal Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals wrongly upheld a District of Columbia federal judge’s finding that prosecution laches barred the inventor’s patent applications; the high court decided against hearing the inventor’s arguments that the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (PTO) cannot use judge-made prosecution laches to deny patents when the applicant complied with Congress’s timing rules.
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July 02, 2026
NEW ORLEANS — Resolving a dispute involving patent licensing agreements, foreign discovery and German and Indian law, the Fifth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals issued an unpublished opinion concluding that a lower court erred by ordering disclosure to in-house counsel for a nonparty’s competitor because the lower court wrongly overrode one clause in the agreements’ confidentiality protections.