Intellectual Property Law and Copyright Laws

The Federal Circuit affirmed a district court's invalidation of patent claims covering a communications apparatus, but shifted the legal basis from indefiniteness to enablement. The court clarified that while impossibility doesn't automatically render claims indefinite under Section 112(b), claims expressly covering inoperable embodiments fail enablement requirements under Section 112(a), as they cannot satisfy the full-scope standard established in Amgen v. Sanofi.

The USPTO's Appeal Review Panel has issued a controversial decision in ex Parte Baurin, reversing a PTAB ruling and establishing that the theoretical possibility of harassment through split patent ownership alone can justify obvious-type double patenting rejections—even without any actual extension of patent monopoly periods.

Generative AI is transforming intellectual property protection strategies, forcing companies to reconsider the traditional preference for patents. As AI-assisted innovations raise new questions about patentability and inventorship, while technologies evolve at unprecedented speed, trade secrets are emerging as an increasingly viable alternative for protecting competitive advantages in software code, datasets, and proprietary workflows.