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August 20, 2026
WASHINGTON, D.C. — A District of Columbia Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals panel determined that a music service failed to establish jurisdiction for its challenge to the Copyright Royalty Board’s interpretation of licensing requirements, leaving it up to a District of Columbia federal judge to determine “what weight, if any, to assign to the Royalty Board’s non-binding regulatory interpretation” in an underlying royalties dispute.
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August 19, 2026
NEW YORK — An independent music artist’s attempts to use a motion for reconsideration of a ruling dismissing one of his claims as a means to amend allegations in his artificial intelligence copyright action and comes too late to save the Tennessee Consumer Protection Act or common law claims, a federal judge in New York said in denying the motion.
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August 19, 2026
WASHINGTON, D.C. — Substantial evidence supported the U.S. Patent Trial and Appeal Board’s (PTAB) finding that a publication describing facial-analysis research was analogous prior art, a Federal Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals panel held, affirming PTAB’s decision that claims of a patent held by television research entity Nielsen Co. (US) LLC were unpatentable as obvious.
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August 19, 2026
NEW YORK — A Second Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals panel on Aug. 18 affirmed a New York federal judge’s denial of beverage markers’ motion to vacate a bench trial finding in defendants-appellees’ favor in a dispute over beverage trademarks; the panel agreed that the plaintiff-appellant entities provided no new evidence that the judge was misled by a fraudulent account about a disputed operating agreement.
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August 18, 2026
SAN FRANCISCO — An expert in large language model (LLM) training and use easily passes the low bar for admissibility, and his reliance on an LLM for testing is not a reason to exclude his opinion that an artificial intelligence model memorizes authors’ styles and works, a proposed copyright class tells a federal judge in California in opposing the expert’s exclusion.
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August 18, 2026
WASHINGTON, D.C. — A Federal Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals panel affirmed a Pennsylvania federal judge’s denial of a preliminary injunction in a dispute over a design patent for a hook for hanging handbags in closets, holding that the judge’s finding that the appellant was unlikely to succeed on the merits a reasonable conclusion due to differences between the design patent and the accused product; the panel issued an erratum to the opinion on Aug. 17, correcting a minor error.
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August 17, 2026
NEW YORK — OpenAI entities defending consolidated copyright actions told a federal judge in New York on Aug. 14 that the news plaintiffs have built a request for sanctions for alleged discovery violations on routine discovery practices in heavily litigated cases and a mischaracterization of events.
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August 14, 2026
LAS VEGAS — A federal judge in Nevada determined that defendant travel agency defendants should see a jury’s $250,000 actual damages award against them doubled to $500,000 for willfully infringing a trademark on the phrase “Dirty Vibes” belonging to an adult entertainment company; the judge also determined that the defendants owe another half a million in disgorgement.
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August 14, 2026
ORLANDO, Fla. — A Florida federal judge agreed to stay the enforcement of more than $1.3 million in Rule 11 sanctions while attorneys that represented a plaintiff school entity and the school itself appeal the order; sanctions were entered after the plaintiff school continued to pursue nationwide trademark damages for several months in 2023 after discovery failed to produce supporting evidence and engaged in what the judge previously called “five-and-a-half years of abusive litigation” in a dispute over virtual schooling trademarks while some of the attorneys appeal the sanctions.
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August 14, 2026
WASHINGTON, D.C. — In a recent petition for a writ of certiorari, Federal Express Corp. (FedEx) has asked the U.S. Supreme Court to review a Federal Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals ruling that the appeals court was barred from reviewing whether Qualcomm Inc. identified all real parties in interest in inter partes review (IPR) proceedings before the U.S. Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB).
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August 14, 2026
SAN ANTONIO — A Texas federal judge found that a patent infringement claim brought by archery product makers against competitors should have been filed in an Iowa federal court; the judge elected to transfer trademark infringement and other claims to the Iowa court as well instead of requiring the claims to be litigated separately in two courts.
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August 13, 2026
DALLAS — In a docket order, a Texas federal judge dismissed with prejudice a trademark infringement dispute between two geotechnical engineering companies due to a stipulation between the parties, which filed the stipulation the same day the judge dismissed the defendant entity’s counterclaim seeking the cancellation of the plaintiff’s marks because it failed to show that the marks were abandoned or generic.
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August 12, 2026
SAN FRANCISCO — Meta Platforms Inc.’s Mark Zuckerberg must sit for a deposition in consolidated artificial intelligence copyright actions after a federal judge in California denied a motion to quash the apex deposition, according to an Aug. 11 docket entry.
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August 12, 2026
WASHINGTON, D.C. — A Federal Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals panel affirmed a U.S. Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) finding that all claims of a video streaming patent challenged by Netflix Inc. were unpatentable as they were obvious in view of a prior art patent; the panel saw no error in the board’s construction of the phrase “a response to the content status” in the challenged claims.
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August 12, 2026
WASHINGTON, D.C. — The Federal Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals on Aug. 11 denied a massage device manufacturer’s petition for en banc rehearing, leaving in place a split panel’s opinion that affirmed a Maine federal judge’s grant of summary judgment of noninfringement in a dispute over a design patent describing the massager; conflicting opinions attached to the order illustrate a sharp dispute over whether current design patent doctrine improperly lets judges dissect designs and decide visual similarity questions that should reach juries.
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August 11, 2026
WASHINGTON, D.C. — A Federal Circuit U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals panel said in an Aug. 10 opinion that it saw no error in a California federal judge’s finding that a company’s interactive chart patents are patent ineligible because they recite the desired result without sufficiently explaining the concrete technological means for achieving it.
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August 11, 2026
SAN FRANCISCO — In the latest chapter in a long-running saga between Jack Daniel’s Properties Inc. (JDPI) and a dog toy manufacturer that has already borne an important U.S. Supreme Court decision, a Ninth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals panel vacated an Arizona judge’s permanent injunction in favor of the liquor maker, finding that while it had proved that its name and registered marks were famous and similar to dog toy marks parodying its own, it had failed to produce nonspeculative evidence that the “obvious parody” was likely to harm JDPI’s reputation.
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August 11, 2026
CHICAGO — A Seventh Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals panel affirmed an Illinois federal judge’s summary judgment against a plaintiff-appellant technology company, holding that there was no evidence on the record to support its claims that another entity misappropriated copyrighted source code for a coin-counting machine the plaintiff-appellant developed for a banking entity based in the United Kingdom.
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August 10, 2026
WASHINGTON, D.C. — A Federal Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals panel in an Aug. 7 opinion affirmed a finding from the U.S. Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) that two claims of a company’s streaming-media patent were anticipated by a prior art reference, rejecting the company’s arguments that PTAB erred in its consideration of multiple pieces of evidence.
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August 07, 2026
ATLANTA — An 11th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals panel affirmed findings from a federal court in Florida that a defendant-appellant infringed a battery company’s trademark on the phrase “Battery Tender” in advertising and customer communications, but in a matter of first impression for the circuit, the panel held that invisible keyword bidding without evidence of customer confusion is not enough to prove infringement.
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August 07, 2026
WASHINGTON, D.C. — The U.S. Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) correctly found that a claim in a patent describing a type of crossbow was unpatentable as anticipated by a prior art reference, a Federal Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals panel held in an Aug. 6 opinion; the panel saw no error in how PTAB construed the phrase “mounted to” when considering how bowstrings were attached to the described crossbow.
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August 06, 2026
WASHINGTON, D.C. — A Federal Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals panel on Aug. 5 affirmed a finding from the U.S. Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) that multiple claims of a patent held by Nike Inc. describing a watch that can connect to electronic devices were unpatentable as anticipated or obvious in view of multiple prior art references.
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August 06, 2026
FORT WORTH, Texas — A federal judge in Texas dismissed with prejudice following a settlement a lawsuit alleging that a supplier of proppants used in hydraulic fracturing misappropriated trade secrets by accessing proprietary software that an information technology services company developed and managed for the supplier’s operations.
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August 05, 2026
WASHINGTON, D.C. — A Federal Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals panel on Aug. 4 affirmed a Florida federal judge’s final judgment of noninfringement in a patent dispute over a generic lidocaine patch because intrinsic evidence showed that the accused patch did not use a claimed dissolving agent.
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August 04, 2026
WASHINGTON, D.C. — Considering a patent dispute between Pfizer Inc. and other biopharmaceutical companies for the second time, a Federal Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals panel affirmed a U.S. Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) finding that Pfizer’s proposed substitute claims for a patent describing pneumococcal vaccine technology would be unpatentable as obvious.