Recent Changes In U.S. Patent Law

The U.S. Copyright Office recently released a report on the human authorship requirement for materials to qualify for copyright protection.

Universal Music Group's lawsuit against DistroKid raises a critical question about AI disclosure in consumer markets: when does the use of artificial intelligence become material information that must be disclosed to consumers? The case centers on allegations that DistroKid distributed mass-generated AI music while creating the impression it was created by legitimate human artists, potentially violating existing consumer protection laws even without specific AI disclosure requirements.

There was a significant ruling in the Doe v. Github case involving training of AI code generator models on open source. The United States Court of Appeals for The Ninth Circuit affirmed the district court ruling dismissing part of an action brought under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (“DMCA”) by programmers against GitHub, Inc., and other defendants. The issues centered on whether defendants removed copyright management information (CMI) from content used to train the AI code generator models.

Is this AI-generated, or is it real? As generative AI tools have become increasingly capable of creating realistic images, videos, and audio, they have also made it easier to impersonate real people without their consent. In response, states are increasingly adopting laws that impose civil and criminal liability for certain AI-generated content that replicates an individual’s identity, likeness, voice, or other personal attributes.

The USPTO has released its latest economic impact report on IP-intensive industries, announced a new community engagement office in North Carolina, and issued several administrative updates including relief for Japanese applicants affected by a severe earthquake. The Patent Trial and Appeal Board has also designated new precedential and informative decisions addressing obviousness-type double patenting and Markush groupings.

Bristol-Myers Squibb and Ono Pharmaceutical have filed a patent infringement lawsuit against Amgen over its proposed nivolumab biosimilar ABP 206, asserting seven patents related to OPDIVO. The complaint follows earlier inter partes review challenges and patent dance negotiations that narrowed the dispute to specific claims covering the antibody sequence, cancer treatment methods, and dosing regimens.

In recent video game news, gaming giant Nintendo filed and settled a lawsuit against the developers of the popular Nintendo Switch emulator, Yuzu.

The U.S. government has filed a Statement of Interest of the United States of America under 28 U.S.C. § 517 in the Southern District of New York multidistrict litigation over OpenAI’s use of copyrighted works to train large language models. The filing appears to be the federal government’s first direct intervention in the wave of artificial intelligence (AI) training copyright cases, and it advises the court to treat model training (separate from use of AI to generate outputs) on copyrighted text standing alone as a highly transformative fair use under current law.

There have been reports of law firms receiving a wave of fraudulent emails impersonating the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO). These emails target trademark applicants with urgent demands...

AI-powered call transcription tools like Otter.ai are facing class action lawsuits under Illinois' Biometric Information Privacy Act (BIPA) for allegedly collecting voiceprints without proper consent. A federal court recently allowed claims to proceed, signaling potential legal risks for companies that provide or utilize these increasingly common meeting recording services.

On September 18, 2026, President Donald Trump signed into law the Lindsey O. Graham Sanctioning Russia and Iran Act of 2026 (Act), a significant package of sanctions, trade restrictions and related measures...

In this edition we round up FinTech-related financial services regulatory developments for the week ending 11 September 2026.

On January 12, 2026, President Trump announced via Truth Social: "[e]ffective immediately, any Country doing business with the Islamic Republic of Iran will pay...

The Financial Stability Board (FSB) has published a letter from its Chair and Governor of the Bank of England, Andrew Bailey, to G20 Finance Ministers and Central Bank Governors.

In recent years, China's biotech scene has risen in prominence with its innovative R&D and promising pipelines commanding big pharma's attention. In this blog, we take a look at this trend, which sees China-related deals and investment continuing to flow, as well as the recent developments in the US, with draft legislation being proposed that seeks to impose restrictions which would impact transactions between US pharma companies and Chinese biotechs. 

On 9 September 2026, the European Commission (the “Commission”) presented its proposal for a new Public Procurement Act, a significant reform of the EU public procurement framework...

Colombia has elected Abelardo De La Espriella as President, marking a pronounced shift to the right following the administration of Gustavo Petro. De La Espriella defeated left-wing senator Iván Cepeda in the June 2026 runoff by a narrow margin of less than 1%.

On 3 March 2026, Manpower Minister Dr Tan See Leng announced that Singapore will raise its statutory retirement age to 64 and re‑employment age to 69 with effect from 1 July 2026.

SIAC Annual Report 2025: Key Statistics, Trends, and Takeaways for International Arbitration Practitioners

In this post we bring you a round-up of recent developments relating to the enforcement of UK trade sanctions breaches, together with news of further Russia-related designations