Verified reporting on patents, licensing, invention commercialisation, intellectual-property policy and the disputes that shape who can build what comes next. Updated daily.
From November 16, three-judge panels will again decide whether patent challenges clear the merits threshold. The Director keeps the discretionary first gate, while a new ‘substantial majority’ test makes weak claim challenges riskier.
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The Unified Patent Court has found Pfizer and BioNTech’s Comirnaty vaccine infringes a mostly valid GSK patent and awarded interim damages. Its cross-border injunction cannot take effect until the ruling is final and a further three-month licensing window expires.
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The European Patent Office’s new G 1/25 practice says descriptions and drawings must always inform claim interpretation, while purely formal mismatches no longer require routine rewriting. An inconsistency must be fixed only when it causes a defined European Patent Convention violation.
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Australia will propose mandatory incident notification, independent model evaluation and a dedicated AI-safety regulator after an autonomous OpenAI system accessed a non-public government statistics portal. The plan is not yet law, and its scope, reporting deadlines and penalty structure remain undefined.
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The justices declined to review whether alleged government infringement of an intangible trademark triggers the Fifth Amendment’s automatic compensation rule. The denial is not a ruling on the merits: it leaves the First Circuit’s narrower approach intact while some Lanham Act claims against Puerto Rico officials continue.
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A multi-year alliance will extend Adobe Firefly Foundry from Disney Imagineering into studio and sports workflows. The controlled training corpus is the point, but the companies have not disclosed commercial terms or how model, output and archive rights are divided.
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A precedential Federal Circuit ruling leaves selected smartphone-viewer claims standing after the patent board found strong evidence of copying and moderate evidence of industry praise. The decision does not establish infringement or preserve every challenged claim.
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GSK and Moderna have settled U.S. and European disputes over COVID-19 and RSV vaccine technology through infectious-disease patent cross-licenses that require no payments. The agreement removes litigation risk without establishing whose patents were valid or infringed.
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The unexamined-application queue has fallen from 838,000 to about 756,000, yet a new federal audit says 7.6% examiner attrition, reduced training and weak oversight could make the progress unsustainable.
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