Analysis

The Top Copyright Decisions Of 2025

By Ivan Moreno

In watershed moments for copyright law and artificial intelligence, two California federal judges delivered the first rulings on whether AI developers' reliance on copyrighted works to train their models qualifies as fair use, providing initial guidance on contentious battles between content creators and tech companies. Here are Law360's picks for the top copyright rulings of 2025.

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Patent Attys Ordered To Explain AI-Hallucinated Citations

By Lauren Berg

A Kansas federal judge ordered the attorneys representing patent licensing company Lexos Media IP in its infringement suit against Overstock.com Inc. to explain why they shouldn't be sanctioned for submitting briefs that contained nonexistent and incorrect legal citations hallucinated by generative artificial intelligence.

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Fed. Circ. Stunned By 'Numerous' Flaws In Patent Appeal

By Adam Lidgett

The Federal Circuit refused Tuesday to revive a patent licensing company's infringement lawsuit over a software patent, finding there were so many issues with the appeal that they "are almost too numerous to count."

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Ultrahuman Loses Bids To Halt ITC Order In Oura Patent Case

By Ryan Davis

The U.S. International Trade Commission and the Federal Circuit have both denied requests by Ultrahuman to stay ITC orders barring imports of its smart rings found to infringe an Ouraring patent, turning aside Ultrahuman's arguments that the orders are too broad.

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Jury Says Magnolia Medical Is Owed $1.6M After Patent Trial

By Adam Lidgett

A Delaware federal jury on Tuesday morning found that Magnolia Medical Technologies Inc. is entitled to nearly $1.6 million after Kurin Inc. infringed its patents tied to devices meant for drawing blood.

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Judge Trims Ziff Davis Copyright Claims In OpenAI MDL

By Elliot Weld

A Manhattan federal judge has dismissed part of a suit from digital media publisher Ziff Davis Inc. against OpenAI alleging that its chatbot ChatGPT was trained on copyrighted content scraped from the internet and gives re-creations of those works when prompted.

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Anthropic Seeks Music Publishers' Claude IP Testing Data

By Dorothy Atkins

Anthropic urged a California federal judge during a hearing Tuesday to order music publishers to produce the prompts and outputs their investigators used to test whether the Claude AI chatbot was infringing song lyrics, while the publishers slammed Anthropic's request as an overbroad third attempt to pierce work-product protections.

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X Hits Company Behind 'Twitter.New' Site With Trademark Suit

By Rae Ann Varona

X Corp. filed suit Tuesday against a company seeking to bring Twitter back, saying in a complaint filed in Delaware federal court that "Twitter never left" and that the trademarks associated with the social media platform remain X's "incontestable intellectual property."

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USPTO To Stay Director Reviews For Fed. Circ. Appeals

By Dani Kass

U.S. Patent and Trademark Office Director John Squires announced Tuesday that he will pause director review proceedings when the petitioner is also asking the Federal Circuit for relief. 

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USPTO Tells Fed. Circ. That Inventor 'Abused' Patent System

By Adam Lidgett

The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office is urging the Federal Circuit to ignore an inventor's call to end doctrine that can render a patent unenforceable based on delays by the owner during prosecution, saying his actions were "a textbook example of unreasonable examination delays."

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Va. Judge Advances Most Claims In Stelara Antitrust Case

By Elliot Weld

A Virginia federal judge has allowed health insurer CareFirst's anticompetition and patent fraud claims against Johnson & Johnson to move forward in a case alleging anticompetitive behavior in relation to the immunosuppressive drug Stelara, while letting the pharmaceutical giant escape some claims of misrepresentation.

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PTAB Cuts X-Ray Patent Claims After Fed. Circ. Remand

By Adam Lidgett

The Patent Trial and Appeal Board has found that three claims that Sigray Inc. challenged in a Carl Zeiss X-Ray Microscopy Inc. X-ray imaging patent were invalid after the Federal Circuit told it to take another look at the claims.

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Bobcat, Caterpillar, Lawmakers Spar Over Possible Import Ban

By Ryan Davis

Doosan Bobcat has told the U.S. International Trade Commission to ignore claims by rival Caterpillar Inc. and eight members of Congress that U.S. industry will be harmed by banning imports of Caterpillar construction machines if they are found to infringe Doosan Bobcat patents.

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BMW Seeks Block On 'Unprecedented' German Patent Case

By Elliot Weld

Carmaker BMW has asked a Texas federal court to block what it called an "unprecedented" attempt to adjudicate U.S. patents in German court by a patent company asserting infringement claims.

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Samsung Wants ITC To Consider Oura Smart Ring IP Fight

By Theresa Schliep

Samsung has expanded its legal battle with Oura over patents covering biometric-tracking wearable technologies, telling the U.S. International Trade Commission that Oura's smart rings infringe a set of four patents owned by Samsung.

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Disney, Cameron Face Copyright Suit Over 1st 'Avatar' Sequel

By Ivan Moreno

Film director James Cameron, his production company and Disney were hit with another copyright infringement lawsuit on Monday from the writer who previously alleged the first "Avatar" movie ripped off his idea, who says in California federal court that the second one is a "blatant" ripoff of his work.

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NC Cardboard Box Salesman Freed From Trade Secrets Suit

By Abigail Harrison

A corrugated packing manufacturer can't hold on to its lawsuit alleging a former star salesman defected to a close competitor with its trade secrets after a North Carolina Business Court judge ruled the complaint is too vague.

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DOD Contractor Says Engineer Stole 2K Files On Last Day

By Bonnie Eslinger

Defense contractor Competitive Range Solutions LLC is suing a field engineer in Virginia federal court, accusing him of violating the Defend Trade Secrets Act by downloading thousands of confidential documents at the end of his last day of work and after accepting a job with a competitor.

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NCAA Escapes Former Villanova Star's Antitrust Suit

By Tom Lotshaw

A Villanova University basketball player who sank a buzzer-beating shot to win the 2016 championship missed the window to bring an antitrust lawsuit accusing the NCAA of unlawfully limiting his ability to earn money, a New York federal judge has ruled.

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Another Dechert IP Atty Leaves, This Time For Morgan Lewis

By Jack Rodgers

Morgan Lewis LLP has added another departing member of the Dechert LLP intellectual property team, who joins the firm in Boston after Dechert's global intellectual property practice co-chair, two partners, and a total of 30 professionals moved to Cooley LLP last week.

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Software Patents May Face New Eligibility Scrutiny

November guidance from the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, along with recent litigation trends from the Federal Circuit, may encourage new challenges in the USPTO and district courts to artificial intelligence and software patents that rely on generic computing functions without concrete details, say attorneys at Venable.

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Opinion

A Uniform Federal Rule Would Curb Gen AI Missteps In Court

To address the patchwork of courts’ standing orders on generative artificial intelligence, curbing abuses and relieving the burden on judges, the federal judiciary should consider amending its civil procedure rules to require litigants to certify they’ve reviewed legal filings for accuracy, say attorneys at Shook Hardy.

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Bonus Spotlight

Susman Godfrey Bests Market With Bonuses Of Up To $280K

By Andrea Keckley

Susman Godfrey LLP announced on Tuesday that it is topping New York's bonus scale with payouts that range from a median of $120,000 for first-year associates to a median of $280,000 for the most senior associates.

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Kasowitz Hid Plummeting Profits From Ex-Partner, Suit Says

By Andrea Keckley

A former Kasowitz LLP partner has accused the firm and its founder, renowned litigator Marc Kasowitz, of misrepresenting its finances and failing to pay him the millions he is owed in a lawsuit in New York state court, alleging the firm's profits have plummeted due to poor management.

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Hagens Berman Sanctioned For Bot Errors In OnlyFans Case

By Emily Sawicki

A California federal judge sanctioned Hagens Berman Sobol Shapiro LLP for submitting four briefs that contained errors blamed on ChatGPT while representing OnlyFans users pursuing proposed class fraud claims against the online platform, tossing the suit but allowing the users a chance to refile.

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DOJ Says NY Court Can't Handle Maurene Comey Firing Suit

By Adrian Cruz

The U.S. Department of Justice has said former prosecutor Maurene Comey's suit challenging the circumstances of her firing should be dismissed, arguing that it is an attempt to sidestep the Civil Service Reform Act.

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Fired Top Antitrust Official Warns Of 'Politicization'

By Courtney Bublé

The former No. 2 at the U.S. Department of Justice's Antitrust Division until he was terminated this year testified Tuesday about the "politicization" of antitrust enforcement.

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Levona Says New Docs Show Reed Smith Lied In $102M Feud

By Emily Sawicki

Levona Holdings Ltd. is pressing a Manhattan federal court to vacate what it calls a fraudulent $102 million arbitral award issued to international shipping company Eletson, arguing that new documents released under the crime-fraud exception show that the company and its prior attorneys at Reed Smith LLP lied during the arbitration.

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Ex-State High Court Chiefs Start Group To Defend Rule Of Law

By Jake Maher

A group of over 40 former chief judges of state supreme courts across the country this week launched a new project to speak out against attacks on the judiciary's independence and educate about the rule of law. 

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Quinn Emanuel Fee Fight Bound For Texas Or Mass. Court

By Carolyn Muyskens

A Massachusetts federal judge is weighing whether to kick Quinn Emanuel's bid for $30 million in legal fees from a former client's parent company, Nano Dimension Ltd., to state court or to the Texas bankruptcy court where the client is undergoing Chapter 11 proceedings.

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Bullivant Houser Files For Ch. 11 After November Closure

By Rose Krebs

The now-shuttered Bullivant Houser Bailey PC has filed for Chapter 11 protection in California, with its chief dissolution officer saying the bankruptcy was filed so the firm can liquidate its assets as it continues "an orderly wind-down" of its operations.

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Corporate Transparency Act Is Constitutional, 11th Circ. Says

By Kevin Pinner

The Corporate Transparency Act is constitutional because it regulates economic activities with a substantial impact on interstate commerce and doesn't violate protections against unreasonable searches, the Eleventh Circuit said Tuesday, reversing a lower court's decision.

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