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  • When Logos Go Quiet: Design Patents and the New Language of Luxury

    Written by Donny Barrios-Mason on December 12, 2025

    While fashion is a global industry, this article focuses primarily on U.S. design-patent and trade-dress protection, with comparative notes on European Union design law. The distinction matters: the United States places greater emphasis on design patents and the limits imposed by §43(a) of the Lanham Act (15 U.S.C. § 1125(a)), while the European Union offers immediate, automatic protection through unregistered Community design rights (UCDs). As “quiet luxury” shifts brand identity away from logos and toward silhouette, craftsmanship, and construction, understanding how these two systems diverge has become essential. This legal conversation is unfolding against a fragmented market backdrop. The Row reached a $1 billion valuation in 2024, and Brunello Cucinelli outperformed its peers despite a difficult year for luxury. Meanwhile, Gucci saw a 26% revenue drop, and LVMH posted its first decline in five years. Increasingly, the brands gaining market share are those protecting their design language rather than their logos.
  • The Dual Edge: Navigating Generative AI’s Professional and Cyber Liability Risks for IP Law Firms

    Written by Jeff Roth on December 12, 2025

    In the specialized, high-stakes domain of Intellectual Property (IP) law, the rapid integration of Generative Artificial Intelligence (GenAI) and other advanced machine learning tools is moving from a competitive advantage to a fundamental operational requirement. These tools promise revolutionary efficiency in core IP tasks—from initial prior art review and complex claim drafting analysis to trademark clearance and litigation strategy development.
  • Navigating the Dual Copyright System in Commercial Music Licensing

    Written by Siddhant Sharma on December 12, 2025

    The commercial utilization of music today is defined by a fundamental flaw: the widespread confusion between a personal streaming license and the necessary Public Performance Right. For business owners, this misconception is not a trivial oversight; it is a critical source of high-figure liability, transforming a standard business practice into a treacherous path of copyright non-compliance.
  • Subject Matter Eligibility of Artificial Intelligence and the Problems with a Functionally Drafted Patent

    Written by Michael Kiklis on December 12, 2025

    Although Artificial Intelligence has been the focus of research since the 1950s, only recently has it become a mainstream topic, discussed and utilized by many. In fact, no one can doubt that AI has become the big hope for future economic gains.
  • The Crossroad of India’s Trademark and Copyright Law

    Written by Mohan Dewan on December 12, 2025

    The protections offered by India’s trademark law and copyright law serve different public policy goals. Trademark law is based on protecting goodwill, avoiding consumer confusion and identifying the source of origin of the goods or services in question. Whereas copyright law encourages authorship and creativity. Even though these areas are separate in theory, they often and inevitably come to a crossroad during their commercial use, especially when an artistic work is used as a logo or in a label which is applied to an article for sale.
  • Patent Licensing Bottlenecks in AI Infrastructure: The Case for Antitrust Intervention

    Written by Nick Cipriani on December 12, 2025

    The artificial intelligence market presents novel challenges for antitrust enforcement, particularly regarding patent licensing arrangements and vertical integration within AI infrastructure.[1] The AI industry's structure creates unique competitive dynamics through the convergence of specialized hardware, proprietary software frameworks, and essential patent portfolios.[2] Understanding these dynamics requires rigorous application of established antitrust principles to define relevant markets, analyze competitive effects, and evaluate potential regulatory solutions. Accordingly, current patent law provides insufficient constraints on exclusionary licensing practices in AI markets where control over essential components determines downstream competitiveness.
  • Is AI “Hallucination” a Proper Term in Patents?

    Written by Thinh Nguyen on December 12, 2025

    The term “hallucination” in a generative AI context has two contradictory attributes: the first attribute refers to unintended and unfavorable results, the second to intended and favorable results. When used in a patent claim, this contradictory term fails the “reasonable certainty” standard for definiteness. A new term is needed to replace “hallucination” when referring to “unintended and unfavorable results” caused by improper training, prompting, or other errors in a machine learning architecture.
  • Beware Clinical Trial Protocols as Prior Art

    Written by Bruce DeKock on December 12, 2025

    Developing new medicines requires innovation and testing. Protecting innovation is essential for pharmaceutical companies. Most scientists and clinicians know that patent applications should be filed to protect new innovations, and that patent applications should be filed before publication of the data confirming the innovation worked. But surprisingly, publications that do not disclose the innovation per se, such as a clinical trial protocol, can be used to invalidate patents. This article explores how publications that do not expressly disclose the results of a clinical trial can be used to invalidate patents on methods for administering pharmaceutical products and provides suggestions to innovators on steps to take to protect their future patent filings.
  • Colorful Words (No, Not That Kind)

    Written by Daphne Singer on December 12, 2025

    2025 is proving to be nearly as transformational as a year for color and intellectual property law as 1995. Thirty years ago, the Supreme Court ruled in Qualitex Co. v. Jacobson Products Co..[1] that single color marks can function as trademarks if they acquire secondary meaning and serve to identify the source of the product without having a functional purpose.[2] More importantly, Amy Heckerling’s Clueless instantly achieved both secondary meaning and source identification for bright yellow plaid.[3] This year, however, a slate of cases and articles have presented a stark proposal that the tide of protections for color marks in Qualitex may be receding.
  • Lights, Camera, Algorithm: The Day Hollywood Lost to the Machine

    Written by Misha Solodovnikov on June 30, 2025

    Artificial Intelligence isn’t pushing boundaries anymore. It’s smashing them. The film and music industries are bracing for impact. Studios are nervous. What once took armies of artists, writers, and directors can now be done in minutes by machines. And the machines are getting really good.
  • Interstellar IP: Unusual Inventions for Manipulating Spacetime, Constructively Reduced to Practice

    Written by Elijah E. Cocks on June 30, 2025

    Bright ideas are as plentiful and varied as the stars in our universe. But under patent law, a conceived idea does not become an invention for which intellectual property (IP) protection may be sought until it is reduced to practice. Long gone are the days when the U.S. Patent Office required that a working model of an invention be submitted with every patent application. It is not required to actually build an invention to reduce it to practice. Instead, the filing of a patent application itself serves as a “constructive” reduction to practice of the disclosed invention. This, of course, does not mean these inventions are necessarily patentable. Whether patentable inventions or not, this article considers some examples of unusual patent-attempted concepts concerning spacetime, black holes, wormholes and more, as constructively reduced to practice by their filing as patent applications that has provided their disclosure in the public record of the galaxy forevermore.
  • Think Twice Before Splitting Invalidity Theories Between the PTAB and District Court

    Written by Bruce Dekock and Scott Davis on June 30, 2025

    Patent defendants have two potential forums to invalidate patents asserted against them: the district court in which they were sued and the USPTO. Filing an Inter Partes Review (IPR) proceeding at the USPTO is a common strategy. The defenses that can be raised in an IPR proceeding are by statute more limited than those in a district court, and the potential estoppel resulting from an IPR decision causes practitioners to carefully consider whether to request IPR and what grounds to raise at the USPTO. On the flip side, in the IPR proceeding the accused infringer “only” needs to prove unpatentability by a preponderance of the evidence, while in a district court the defendant must establish invalidity by clear and convincing evidence. A wary defendant may be tempted to divide invalidity arguments between the two forums, but there are potential downsides of such a strategy.
  • Strategic Patent Invalidation in the Age of AI: Tools, Tactics, and Techniques That Work

    Written by Anant Kataria on June 30, 2025

    In litigation or high-stakes licensing, the strength of a patent is rarely taken at face value. Whether defending against infringement, navigating cross-licensing negotiations, or advising on portfolio development, one question can reframe the entire matter: Can this patent be invalidated?
  • AI Regulation & Trade Secrets Protection – Do they conflict?

    Written by Matthew D’Amore on June 30, 2025

    The past year produced a flurry of state legislative efforts to address the risks associated with the increasing capabilities of artificial intelligence systems. While generative AI systems like ChatGPT draw attention in public discourse, the enacted and proposed state laws reach other algorithmic systems whose use might present a risk to the public. At the same time, these efforts may present a risk to the trade secrets employed in developing and deploying the regulated AI systems.
  • Insurance Coverage Opportunities for Trademark Dilution Claims

    Written by David A. Gauntlett on June 30, 2025

    A typical trademark suit will assert various causes of action with names familiar to the average person, including the well-known trademark infringement. Unfortunately for policyholders, these claims are typically excluded by a policy’s IP exclusion.[1] Though less known, trademark dilution is also common and can often be leveraged to attain coverage for the entire suit. This path to coverage is rarely recognized by insurance claims handlers, leading to a quick denial. Luckily, experienced coverage counsel can explain that mistake and secure coverage despite an initial denial.
  • Foreign Filing Licenses (FFLs) and their Alternatives for Patenting Inventions with India Resident Inventors

    Written by Dr. Mohan Dewan on June 30, 2025

    Inventors residing in India have made substantial contributions to global progress. Many of these individuals pursue education and careers abroad, collaborating with prestigious organizations and universities, where they develop inventions that are patentable and hold significant commercial value. Complex residency determinations must be considered to determine if a Foreign Filing License or alternatively a Provisional Specification (PS) must first be requested or filed prior to filing outside of India.
  • A Track I to PTA delay, delay, delay

    Written by Todd Martin on December 16, 2024

    For many of us, a Track I case means quick, efficient examination with a prosecution resolution in less than a year, with a patent grant potentially within 3 to 6 months. Like business class travel, if you want the special service, you typically have to pay for it. For Track I, those fees are presently $4,200 (large entity), or $1,680 (small entity).
  • Reassessing the Right to Copy and Use a Product or Process of an Expired U.S. Patent in View of Allergan

    Written by John D. Vandenberg on December 16, 2024

    In 1997, I stated in measured tones to a panel of the Federal Circuit that U.S. patent law creates a right to copy and use designs described but not claimed in a U.S. utility patent, quoting the Supreme Court[1]. Judge Rich responded in unmeasured tones: “I wrote the patent laws, and they have no right to copy!” We were both right, but only Judge Rich, naturally, wrote the opinion.[2]
  • Where Are All the Software Output Lawsuits?

    Written by Evan Zimmerman on December 16, 2024

    Intellectual property rights have a general requirement that they come from people. In patent law, this is called inventorship. In copyright law, authorship. Although these rights can be assigned to corporations, in general the position of nearly every government office is converging on the opinion that inventors and authors must be people. The stakes are particularly high because failing to include an individual inventor or author means the death of that IP.
  • Exposing the Flaws: Dystopian Science Fiction as a Critique of Intellectual Property Laws

    Written by Daniel Mendoza on December 16, 2024

    Dystopian science fiction frequently portrays exaggerated and speculative scenarios that serve as critical commentaries on intellectual property (IP) laws. By envisioning grim futures shaped by unchecked technological and societal advancements, these narratives provide a unique perspective on the shortcomings and societal impacts of current IP systems. This analysis employs comparative literature and thematic exploration to examine how seminal films and novels, such as Gattaca (1997), The Running Man (1982), Minority Report (2002), and Neuromancer (1984), expose issues such as monopolistic control, stifled innovation, and ethical dilemmas associated with IP laws. Through these works, we see how IP regulations can deepen economic disparity, restrict access to technology, and hinder creativity. The study advocates for broadening research into additional sci-fi works and integrating interdisciplinary approaches to inspire innovative legal reforms. By dramatizing potential consequences, science fiction plays a critical role in reshaping IP laws to enhance fairness, innovation, and accessibility.