PatentNext Takeway: Ex parte Desjardins—and especially the USPTO’s decision to make it precedential—appears to be shifting examination away from § 101 and toward § 112 written-description scrutiny, particularly for AI-related inventions. For AI-related inventions, a central takeaway is that practitioners should expect more examiner demands for concrete disclosure of how an AI model is trained,
On April 15, 2026, the Department of Justice (DOJ) announced that two U.S. nationals, Kejia Wang and Zhenxing Wang, were sentenced for facilitating a North Korean IT worker scheme that compromised over 80 U.S. identities, with sentences of 108 and 92 months respectively, supervised release, and forfeiture orders.
The scheme involved the defendants operating “laptop
On April 22, 2026, OpenAI released its new Privacy Filter tool, designed to identify and mask sensitive information in text before that text is stored, shared, or used in downstream processing. OpenAI says the tool can detect items such as names, addresses, account numbers, private dates, and other personal data in documents, logs, and datasets
The USPTO’s Foreign Applicant Rule Shifts Control of U.S. Patent Filings to Registered Counsel by Ed Khalili, J.d., Pharm
The USPTO’s Foreign Applicant Rule Shifts Control of U.S. Patent Filings to Registered Counsel
A structural change is coming to U.S. patent practice. Effective July 20, 2026, the United States Patent and Trademark Office will require that patent applicants
On Thursday, April 23, 2026 and Friday, April 24, 2026, I will be speaking at the AIPLA 2026 Trade Secret Summit at the Texas A&M Law Center in Fort Worth, Texas on two panels. On the Thursday panel, I will be joining Ben Fink of Berman Fink Van Horn P.C., Stephanie Southwick of Burford
Never one to shy away from the action, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) filed two earnings claims-related cases in a single day. While we covered the first action – FTC v. Wellington – here, the second case is no less instructive and further underscores the FTC’s current enforcement priorities.
On April 13, the FTC
The United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) has announced several new artificial intelligence (AI) enhancements to its trademark search system and to the Trademark Center, continuing its broader effort to modernize trademark examination and improve both searchability and application quality. One of the most notable updates is a new beta image-search capability within the
As part of Seyfarth’s 2026 Trade Secrets Webinar Series, our panel presented Protecting the House: Trade Secret Risks in Online Gaming, Sportsbooks & Predictive Markets, examining how the rapid expansion of digital wagering platforms is reshaping trade secret risk, regulatory exposure, and competitive strategy.
Michael Wexler, Mitch Robinson, and Bessie Fakhri led a
As with all industries, agentic AI is already starting to have a dramatic impact on the automotive industry, particularly with regard to:
California Governor Gavin Newsom issued a new executive order aimed at tightening California’s procurement rules for artificial intelligence (AI) vendors and “raising the bar” for companies that want to sell AI tools to the state. The administration says the goal is to ensure contractors meet strong standards and can demonstrate responsible policies that prevent misuse,