INTELLECTUALLY SPEAKING®

Ninety years ago, the Supreme Court held that a patentee who has never made or sold a patented article owes the public no marking and forfeits no damages for the want of it. Wine Ry. Appliance Co. v. Enterprise Ry. Equipment Co., 297 U.S. 387 (1936). On August 19, 2026, the Federal Circuit decided VDPP, LLC v. Volkswagen Group of America, Inc., No. 2024-2226, 2026 WL 2416565 (Fed. Cir. Aug. 19, 2026), a precedential opinion holding that a non-practicing patentee seeking pre-suit damages cannot plead around known licensees with the bare assertion that it has no products of its own to mark. The proposed pleading had to allege facts showing compliance with 35 U.S.C. § 287(a), including compliance by licensees. Id. at *2–3.....

Anaqua's acquisition of Unified Patents should be a wake-up call to patent owners.

Finally, Congress signals it might move PERA, but it might already be too late this term.

Big Tech’s playbook is to outlast you….

Patent enforcement is a specialized field that operates by rules most inventors never learn until they have already broken them. By the time a small inventor discovers infringement and decides to act, the most consequential decisions about the case have often already been made, usually by acciden...

“The Federal Circuit’s Opinion in mCom IP, LLC v. City Nat’l Bank of Fla. Provides useful guidance on § 285.”

The United States patent system is at an inflection point. For over a decade, patent eligibility doctrine under 35 U.S.C. §101 has drifted into uncertainty, producing inconsistent judicial outcomes and eroding the reliability of patent rights in critical areas of innovation. The Patent Eligibilit...

“Ortiz v. Vizio does not alter Wine Railway’s core holding that a non-practicing entity does not need to patent mark.”

Have a read if you are concerned about the increasingly narrow public narrative surrounding patent enforcement and its impact on innovation. #LegalLift    LINK TO ARTICLE 

This article explores the Supreme Court's requirement that a case must be both objectively baseless and subjectively baseless before a court may consider the content of a settlement offer in supporting any further sanction or award......

The Supreme Court limits the use of settlement communications to establish a sham litigation to cases where both objective and subjective bad faith is found.  This article explores why the same requirement of both objective and subjective bad faith is necessary before a settlement demand can be u...