Supreme Court patent docket swells with 13 petitions, two more pending, and major fights over IPR review, eligibility, damages, and claim scope.

The USPTO will close out FY2026 (which ends September 30) with about 320k utility patent grants, down about 3% from FY2025. Although the total is a bit down this year, an interesting shift here is ...

The Federal Circuit has vacated a PTAB obviousness rejection of a catheter claim, holding that the Board's reading of the claim term "flow barrier" was unreasonably broad. In re Incept LLC, No.

On September 10, the Federal Circuit heard argument in ABC IP, LLC v. Peak Tactical, LLC, No. 26-1527, Rare Breed Triggers' appeal from the denial of a preliminary injunction against the "Disruptor," ...

This is the second post on Versata Software, LLC v. Ford Motor Co. On September 10, 2026, the Federal Circuit issued a modified version of its May 22 opinion, changing a single substantive sentence.

Lawyers using the AI tool (Google's internal InFlow tool) drafted better applications; and the applications improved over time (10 days vs 90 days of use). (Blinded patent attorneys at an outside firm ...

Time to make January plans. The IP CLE Conference returns to the Grand Hyatt Vail on January 6-9, 2027, and I will again be handling the patent case law review on Saturday morning. David Bernstein ...

Analogy is a key feature of judicial reasoning. Today’s decision uses The Big Lebowski to make the point that discovery cannot be used as an open-ended search for a claim that a plaintiff does not yet ...

The Federal Circuit will hear oral arguments in four patent appeals on Tuesday morning (Sept 8). I read the merits briefing in all four. What they share is that the appellee argues procedural defect ...

Terminal disclaimers now appear on about 10% of issued utility patents, the lowest annual rate since 2008 and down from almost 22% in 2023. Obviousness-type double patenting (OTDP) may be the nerdiest ...

Professor John Duffy (UVA) appears to be in line to take over as USPTO General Counsel. GC is the Director’s principal legal advisor and runs an office of about 130 lawyers that include the Office of ...

This is the fourth post about VDPP, LLC v. Volkswagen Group of America, Inc., No. 2024-2226 (Fed. Cir. Aug. 19, 2026): that is a lot for this little case. The earlier ones covered Judge Rosenthal’s ...