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July 31, 2026
WASHINGTON, D.C. — A Federal Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals panel in a July 30 opinion affirmed a finding from the U.S. Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) that a telecommunications company’s challenged patent claims were invalid as anticipated; the panel rejected the appellant entity’s argument that PTAB violated the Administrative Procedure Act (APA) by relying on an argument about which it did not have proper notice.
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July 31, 2026
WASHINGTON, D.C. — A split Federal Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals panel affirmed an Illinois federal judge’s decision to dissolve a preliminary injunction issued against a defendant-appellee and deny a temporary restraining order against new defendants in a dispute over a design patent covering a foldable fan, rejecting the plaintiff-appellant’s contention that collateral estoppel barred the judge from reconsidering the injunction and that the judge impermissibly relied on a later-issued, presumptively valid design patent to conclude that the plaintiff-appellant was unlikely to prove infringement.
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July 31, 2026
WASHINGTON, D.C. — After the expiration of the relevant patent, a Federal Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals panel vacated a final determination from the U.S. International Trade Commission (ITC) that an appellant company violated an import trade law by importing a device that infringed a skin treatment company’s patent, rejecting the patent owner’s citation of potential collateral effects on a parallel inter partes review (IPR) proceeding.
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July 30, 2026
PHILADELPHIA — A partially split Third Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals panel on July 29 affirmed both attorney fees against plaintiff entities over their unsuccessful copyright and trademark claims in a dispute over fudge and affirmed their jury victory on trade secret claims, holding that there was enough evidence in the record for a jury to find that a fudge recipe derived economic value from remaining secret.
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July 30, 2026
WASHINGTON, D.C. — The Federal Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals denied without explanation Microsoft Corp.’s petition for panel rehearing or rehearing en banc, leaving in place a panel’s March reversal of a Texas federal judge’s decision to exclude a plaintiff technology company’s expert on damages and vacatur of the judge’s grant of summary judgment for absence of remedy in Microsoft’s favor on infringement claims involving patents describing a method for communication between virtual networks.
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July 30, 2026
SAN JOSE, Calif. — Anthropic PBC must preserve more than 500 million individual Claude prompts and outputs, with half of the randomly selected records coming from before Jan. 28, and the other 250 million from between that date and March 24, as well as any records from that time frame containing certain terms relevant to the copyright battle over artificial intelligence song lyrics, a federal judge in California said.
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July 30, 2026
BALTIMORE — The owner of a cigar company filed a complaint in Maryland federal court against Philip Morris USA Inc. (PM) in which he seeks $8 billion in compensatory damages and declaratory relief protecting his intellectual property rights to file a “good faith” application to trademark and commercialize his MARLBORO MAN trademark, purportedly in tribute to his father.
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July 29, 2026
TAMPA, Fla. — A federal judge in Florida adopted a magistrate judge’s report and recommendation that urged the court to partially grant a motion for final default judgment in a case launched by organizations affiliated with President Donald Trump that alleged that a host of online sellers infringed trademarks on the phrase “Make America Great Again” and Trump’s name, awarding a total of $14.6 million in damages.
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July 29, 2026
NEW YORK — A New York federal judge denied an anonymous website operator’s motion to quash a Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) subpoena seeking identifying information from an internet services company, finding that the copyright holder presented a concrete infringement claim and sought information necessary to identify and sue the operator.
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July 29, 2026
SAN FRANCISCO — A federal judge in California granted final approval of a $1.5 billion class action settlement between authors and Anthropic PBC in a copyright suit over texts used to train Anthropic’s artificial intelligence programs; the judge held that the settlement was fair to the class members, providing “substantial benefits to the Class in light of the novel claims asserted.”
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July 29, 2026
SAN FRANCISCO — A California federal judge granted a veteran radio journalist’s motion to send his suit against Google LLC and its parent back to state court; the judge agreed with the journalist’s argument that his suit that claims that one of Google’s artificial intelligence (AI) products mimicked the cadence of his voice focused on the use of his likeness, not the copying of copyrighted material and was thus not preempted by the Copyright Act.
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July 28, 2026
WASHINGTON, D.C. — A technology company was entitled to a judgment as a matter of law (JMOL) in its favor in a dispute over a patent describing a biodegradable fiber implant, a Federal Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals panel held in a July 27 opinion, reversing a Delaware federal jury’s findings in favor of the patent holder because a prior art patent disclosed every asserted claim of the patent at issue.
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July 27, 2026
WASHINGTON, D.C. — After a June opinion in which a Federal Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals panel affirmed a Massachusetts federal judge’s finding that a biopharmaceutical company’s patent claims were invalid as anticipated by a public disclosure of a chemical compound central to the patent, the patent holder has filed a petition for panel rehearing or rehearing en banc, arguing that the panel’s opinion creates a new and unprecedented requirement for an in haec verba disclosure to satisfy the written description requirement.
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July 27, 2026
WASHINGTON, D.C. — A Federal Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals panel in a July 24 opinion affirmed a U.S. Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) decision that held multiple claims of a patent describing a system for analyzing operational problems in trains were unpatentable as obvious.
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July 24, 2026
WASHINGTON, D.C. — A Federal Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals panel in a July 23 opinion partly revived a technology company’s patent infringement dispute against Amazon.com Inc. over digital picture frame devices because the claim’s specific technical solution meant it was not directed at an abstract idea, reversing a California federal judge’s finding that one of the patent claims at issue was invalid.
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July 24, 2026
PHILADELPHIA — A federal judge in Pennsylvania dismissed certain defendants related to the distiller of Tullamore D.E.W. Irish whiskey, holding that a songwriter who brought copyright claims based on alleged unpaid use of a song in advertisements for the whiskey failed to show that the distilling entities were subject to the court’s personal jurisdiction, despite their corporate relationship to a co-defendant that was not dismissed.
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July 24, 2026
NEW YORK — An artist who created a Styrofoam sculpture of a snake for an Italian adult film star and politician should have discovered the sculpture’s use in another artist’s works featuring the pornographic actress created in the late 1980s and early 1990s long before the filing of a 2021 suit, a Second Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals panel found, upholding a New York federal judge’s finding that the plaintiff-appellant’s claims were time-barred.
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July 23, 2026
WASHINGTON, D.C. — The Federal Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals denied Apple Inc.’s petition for panel rehearing and rehearing en banc, leaving in place a panel’s March finding that the U.S. International Trade Commission (ITC) did not err when it held that Apple violated the Tariff Act by importing and selling Apple Watch models that infringed blood oxygenation patents held by other technology entities.
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July 23, 2026
LOS ANGELES — After Cox Commc'ns, Inc. v. Sony Music Ent., movie and television production companies’ contributory copyright infringement claim is doomed because there is no evidence that Midjourney Inc. displayed copyrighted material or encouraged users to produce it, the artificial intelligence image company says in a motion for partial judgment on the pleadings. Meanwhile, the parties wrapped briefing on Midjourney’s attempt to have a judge take a second look at a ruling limiting discovery into the plaintiffs’ consumer-facing AI uses.
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July 21, 2026
PHILADELPHIA — A Third Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals panel on July 20 affirmed a Delaware federal judge’s dismissal with prejudice of a breach of contract suit involving a licensing agreement for patented hand sanitizer and other skin-care products; the panel agreed with the judge that the plaintiff-appellant entity never received a required affirmative written communication that would allow it to bring infringement suits regarding the patents.
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July 21, 2026
RICHMOND, Va. — The Fourth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals on July 20 remanded for the district court to consider a commercial general liability insurer’s argument that its declaratory relief action was rendered moot by the settlement of an underlying lawsuit alleging that a nightclub insured misappropriated professional models’ likenesses and injured their professional reputations by posting their images online without their consent, noting that the question of mootness was raised by the insurer for the first time on appeal.
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July 21, 2026
NASHVILLE, Tenn. — X Corp. and a group of music publishers stipulated to the dismissal with prejudice of copyright claims brought against X in a Tennessee federal court, bringing an end to the suit in which the publishers argued that the social media outlet was liable for contributory infringement based on infringing actions by its users.
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July 20, 2026
WASHINGTON, D.C. — A Federal Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals panel vacated a nearly $12.7 million award to software entities by a judge in the U.S. Court of Federal Claims, holding that the judge improperly used unforeseeable hindsight when assessing the value of a company’s copyrighted software that was infringed by the United States.
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July 20, 2026
WASHINGTON, D.C. — A Federal Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals panel said on July 17 that the U.S. Patent Trial and Appeal Board’s (PTAB) finding that certain claims of a patent describing a type of manually-operated treadmill were unpatentable as obvious in view of prior art references should stand in a dispute between two fitness device manufacturers.
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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.