On December 10, the Federal Circuit affirmed the Trademark Trial and Appeal Board (“TTAB”)’s decision to cancel Game Plan, Inc. (“Game Plan”)’s registered trademark and dismiss its opposition to Uninterrupted IP, LLC (“UNIP”)’s pending applications.  The dispute centered on whether a party can acquire priority over a registered mark by purchasing common law trademark rights […]

Rex Medical, L.P. v. Intuitive Surgical, Inc., Case No. 24-1072 (Fed. Cir. Oct. 2, 2025) The Federal Circuit’s opinion in Rex Medical, L.P. v. Intuitive Surgical, Inc. underscores the judiciary’s strict insistence on reliable damages methodology and proper apportionment in patent cases.  Although the jury initially awarded Rex Medical $10 million for infringement of U.S. Patent No. 9,439,650 (“the ‘650 Patent”), the district […]

What went wrong is plain from the record. Phillips 66 courted Propel, obtained deep access to Propel’s models and strategy during diligence, and repeatedly signaled that a deal was on track. Inside Phillips 66, however, executives debated a “go it alone” pivot while still drawing on Propel’s information. The team that had supported diligence began […]

In Bartz et al. v. Anthropic, the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California considered whether Anthropic’s use of copyrighted books—many sourced from pirated libraries, others destructively scanned from purchased print copies—to train its Claude AI models qualified as fair use.  The court held that the latter was fair use; the former was not.  […]