FedCircuitBlog

Here is a report on recent news and commentary related to the Federal Circuit and its cases. Today we highlight:

• a piece arguing the Federal Circuit’s 2026 docket reveals a “recurring concern” with threshold questions of “standing, jurisdiction, reviewability, finality and adjudicative authority” that cut across substantive fields;
• an article reporting on a new petition for writ of certiorari arguing the Federal Circuit has effectively collapsed the Supreme Court’s two-step eligibility framework into “a single inquiry”; and
• a commentary explaining how a recent Federal Circuit decision sharpened the “skilled searcher” standard for determining what prior art grounds a petitioner “reasonably could have raised” under the statutory inter partes review estoppel provision.

Here is a report on recent news and commentary related to the Federal Circuit and its cases. Today we highlight:

• an article suggesting that “[t]wo decisions issued by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit within the past couple of months have brought” the difference between patent and trademark preemptive infringement remedies “into sharper focus”;
• a blog post discussing how “[p]atent filings are now mined not only by competitors, but by governments, intelligence agencies, sovereign investors, and increasingly sophisticated artificial intelligence systems capable of analyzing millions of documents simultaneously”;
• an article highlighting how “[t]wo important patent prosecution data points that are in tension: [t]he vast majority of patent applications are initially rejected by the patent examiner; and [t]he vast majority of patent applications eventually issue as a patent”; and
• an article arguing that, “over the past several months, the Trump administration has eroded” the Merit System Protection Board’s “authority in a series of steps that some former officials say have left the board a shell of the institution it once was.”

Here is a report on recent news and commentary related to the Federal Circuit and its cases. Today we highlight:

• a blog post suggesting a recent Federal Circuit “decision is important because it overturns USPTO policy implementing” the America Invents Act and, “ultimately, . . . gives patent owners a new way to knock out references that reach back to a priority filing date”;
• a blog post contemplating how the “absence of a presumption of irreparable harm” in a recent Federal Circuit decision “remains a fraught issue”;
• a blog post reporting that “[f]ormer Deputy Director of the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, Coke Morgan Stewart, has joined the Council for Innovation Promotion as President and CEO;” and
• an article arguing that President “Trump’s resistance to judicial review goes beyond criticizing the reasoning or conclusions of judges who rule against him.”

Here is a report on recent news and commentary related to the Federal Circuit and its cases. Today we highlight:

• an article covering how Judge Albright of the Western District of Texas recently urged Congress to “fix Section 101” before a “tsunami” of artificial intelligence cases raise difficult questions related to patent eligibility;
• an article reporting how “[g]overnment lawyers said a Court of International Trade judge overstepped his authority by ordering the U.S. Customs and Border Patrol to issue refunds to all companies that paid tariffs that were deemed illegal in February, even those that didn’t file a lawsuit in trade court”;
• an article discussing how last week the Federal Circuit “declined to reconsider its test for determining when a design patent is infringed, months after the court’s chief judge harshly criticized the current standard in a case involving body massage tools”; and
• a blog post highlighting how the USPTO “published a Federal Register Notice Tuesday announcing administrative updates to the General Requirements Bulletin.”

Here is a report on recent news and commentary related to the Federal Circuit and its cases. Today we highlight:

• an article suggesting the Federal Circuit in a recent opinion “explored and clarified” the limits on how a court can correct errors in patents;
• a blog post indicating another recent Federal Circuit decision answers the question of “[w]hat value” a patent has when it “expires before it issues”;
• an article explaining how the Supreme Court’s “unanimous decision in Hikma v. Amarin fundamentally altered the legal landscape for generic pharmaceutical manufacturers, imposing a stricter standard for what constitutes patent infringement liability and potentially clearing a path for lower-cost alternatives to reach patients sooner”; and
• an article arguing President Trump’s “new Section 301 tariffs . . . run afoul of the major questions doctrine, which requires Congress to ‘speak clearly’ when authorizing the executive to make decisions of ‘vast economic and political significance.’”

Here is a report on recent news and commentary related to the Federal Circuit and its cases. Today we highlight:

• an article discussing “a recent decision from the . . . Federal Circuit reinforcing the boundaries of patent eligibility as it concerns artificial intelligence and machine learning models”;
• a blog post covering how the “Office of Personnel Management moved Friday to finalize regulations that collectively seize jurisdiction over thousands of employee appeals, as the federal government’s dedicated HR agency moves to centralize power over the federal workforce”; and
• an article highlighting purported experts as saying that, “while Section 301 is the apparent ‘Plan C’ for enacting tariffs on virtually all U.S. imports, the law gives the president a better legal defense for the duties.”

Here is a report on recent news and commentary related to the Federal Circuit and its cases. Today we highlight:

• an article discussing how, “[o]n the eve of the 250th anniversary of Independence Day, in the nation’s capital, the Federal Circuit Center for Innovation and Law invited the public to the Justice Up Close, History All Around civics program to explore how law, innovation, science, and civic action have shaped the nation”;
• a blog post highlighting how USPTO Deputy Director Coke Morgan Stewart “announced this week that she will be leaving the Office as of this Friday”; and
• a blog post noting how “[n]early four dozen Democrats are calling for the reversal of a key Merit Systems Protection Board decision that they say could greatly expand presidential firing powers across the career federal workforce.”

Here is a report on recent news and commentary related to the Federal Circuit and its cases. Today we highlight:

• an article suggesting that “[w]hether machine learning is patent eligible depends upon whether you ask the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit or the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office”;
• a blog post discussing how “the majority of Schedule A cases ‘involve allegations of trademark or design patent infringement, though some allege violations of copyrights or of utility patents”;
• a blog post highlighting highlighting how, “[i]n the space of a few months, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit and the U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts delivered two decisions that, read together, change how patent applicants and their counsel should approach the deceptively simple question of who invented what”; and
• a blog post covering how the USPTO’s “‘settled expectations’ policy” for denying petitions for inter partes review “now has a second challenger at the Supreme Court.”

Here is a report on recent news and commentary related to the Federal Circuit and its cases. Today we highlight:

• a blog post discussing how, “[s]ince the institution of inter parte review . . . proceedings under the Leahy-Smith America Invents Act in 2012, parallel proceedings before the Patent Trial and Appeals Board and district courts have become somewhat commonplace”; and
• a report analyzing how “[r]ecent administrations have conducted several investigations into whether various foreign practices are actionable . . . under Section 301 [of the Trade Act of 1974], . . . one of a number of statutes those administrations have used to impose tariffs on various U.S. imports.”

Here is a report on recent news and commentary related to the Federal Circuit and its cases. Today we highlight:

• an article noting how “[s]everal U.S. senators expressed strong support at a hearing Tuesday for a bill aimed at expanding which inventions are eligible for patents, while others appeared to have reservations about the potential effect of the proposed changes on healthcare costs”;
• a blog post discussing how the Federal Circuit “reaffirmed its understanding that so-called ‘book of wisdom’ evidence can be used in estimating the hypothetical bargain the parties would have negotiated as of the date of infringement, but not to alter the terms of the bargain they would have struck in view of ex post evidence”;
• a blog post highlighting how a “unanimous opinion authored by Judge Hughes affirmed” fixing “the government’s liability for infringing . . . through a hypothetical negotiation rather than simply using the rates in the parties’ prior license”; and
• a blog post suggesting risk to patent rights created using artificial intelligence “almost never comes from the AI model’s involvement.”