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10/30/2026

A district court cut an $82.26 million verdict down to three dollars. The Federal Circuit put it back.

In Versata Software, LLC v. Ford Motor Co. (Fed. Cir. May 22, 2026, modified Sept. 10, 2026), the court reversed a categorical bar on unjust-enrichment damages for trade secret misappropriation and reinstated the contract verdict. Both the Defend Trade Secrets Act and the Michigan Uniform Trade Secrets Act allow recovery of unjust enrichment not already accounted for in actual loss. The court also declined to read a heightened knowledge requirement into combination trade secrets.

Actual loss is hard to prove for a process or a combination. Where the defendant's gain is the measurable number, the damages case can rest there. If your trade secret program records what the information is worth to you but nothing about what it would be worth to someone else, that second half is what a damages expert will come looking for.

General information only, not legal advice, and may be attorney advertising. Legal disclaimer: https://www.leehayes.com/legal

09/14/2026

As of July 20, 2026, a US patent filing with any foreign-domiciled applicant or owner must come through a registered US patent practitioner. The rule reaches every paper filed on or after that date, whatever the application's original filing date.

The USPTO's final rule, Required Use by Foreign Applicants and Patent Owners of a Patent Practitioner, 91 Fed. Reg. 13,510 (Mar. 20, 2026), turns on domicile, not citizenship: legal residence for individuals, principal place of business for entities. One foreign-domiciled party on the application triggers the requirement for the whole file.

The trap is in the mechanics. An application still receives a filing date, but an application data sheet not signed by a practitioner is treated as a mere transmittal. Inventorship is not established and priority and benefit claims do not take effect. Requests that must be made at filing, a nonpublication request or Track One prioritized examination, can be permanently lost.

For foreign associates coordinating US filings, the sequencing matters more than the paperwork. The US practitioner has to be in place before the filing date, not after it, and that is the kind of procedural precision referral relationships are built on.

General information only, not legal advice, and may be attorney advertising. Legal disclaimer: https://www.leehayes.com/legal

09/10/2026

US Patent 6,637,447 protects a small umbrella, five to seven inches across, that attaches to your beverage.

The Beerbrella issued October 28, 2003 to Mason McMullin, Robert Bell, and Mark See. The claims cover the attachment means, a clip, strap, cup, or foam insulator, and one embodiment adds a pivot joint with a counterweight so the canopy swings aside when you drink.

The subject is whimsical. The drafting is not. The patent never claims the idea of shading a drink. It claims specific mechanical implementations of it, which is what made it allowable and is the same discipline that separates strong claims from weak ones in any technology.

It lapsed for nonpayment of maintenance fees in 2007, four years after issue. That is not a failure. It is a portfolio working the way it should. Not every filing needs to be carried for twenty years, and sometimes the right call is to stop paying and fund what is actually being used.

General information only, not legal advice, and may be attorney advertising. Legal disclaimer: https://www.leehayes.com/legal

09/08/2026

A.L.M. and Ergon granted an exclusive, worldwide, royalty-bearing license under their asphalt-technology patents. The district court held they had licensed away their right to be in court at all.

In A.L.M. Holding Co. v. Zydex Industries Private Ltd., No. 2025-1317 (Fed. Cir. May 19, 2026), the Federal Circuit reversed. The owners had kept the right to sue infringers, a continuing royalty interest, and approval rights over sublicense terms. That retained right to sue was not rendered illusory by the licensee's rights, and it was enough for Article III standing.

The court separated constitutional standing from the statutory question under section 281, and it declined an invited bright-line rule that owning a patent alone confers standing, keeping the case-by-case reading of what the license actually transferred. The same panel applied the same framework the same day in a nonprecedential companion, Recor Medical v. Medtronic Ireland.

License structure decides enforcement rights years after signing. The clauses that preserved the courthouse door here were negotiated long before anyone contemplated this suit. Worth reading your exclusive licenses for what they keep as carefully as for what they grant.

General information only, not legal advice, and may be attorney advertising. Legal disclaimer: https://www.leehayes.com/legal

09/04/2026

A provisional application is often treated as a placeholder that locks in a year of protection. It does not work that way. A provisional secures a priority date only for what it actually describes.

The Federal Circuit made the point on June 23, 2026, in Enanta Pharmaceuticals, Inc. v. Pfizer, Inc. Enanta's issued patent claimed a chemical variant that fell outside what its earlier provisional had described. Because the provisional never described that variant, the claims lost the earlier priority date.

That gap mattered. With the earlier date gone, an intervening disclosure from Pfizer became prior art, and it anticipated the claims.

The lesson reaches well beyond chemistry. When the claims in your non-provisional drift past what the provisional actually supported, you lose the early date for those additions, and anything published in between can be used against you.

Before you file the non-provisional, read the provisional against the claims you intend to pursue and confirm the support is really there. If you want a second set of eyes on that comparison, we do this work.

09/02/2026

A design patent covers the ornamental appearance of a product, not the way it functions. That distinction decides cases.

On February 2, 2026, in Range of Motion Products LLC v. Armaid Co., the Federal Circuit affirmed summary judgment of non-infringement on a design patent. Courts apply the ordinary observer test, but first they filter out features that exist for functional reasons. Once the functional elements were set aside, the remaining ornamental features were too different to count as copying. Chief Judge Moore dissented.

For a product team, the strength of a design patent depends on how much of your product's look is genuinely ornamental rather than driven by function. When function dominates the shape, a design patent gives you less room than it appears to.

That is the moment to consider whether a utility patent or trade dress fits the protection you actually need, and the most useful version of that conversation happens during development, before the design is locked.

General information only, not legal advice, and may be attorney advertising. Legal disclaimer: https://www.leehayes.com/legal

08/31/2026

Here is a patent that catches people off guard and teaches something real. U.S. Patent No. 5,443,036, granted in 1995, covers a method of exercising a cat by moving a handheld laser's bright spot so the cat chases it.

The inventors were not claiming the laser was new. They were claiming the method of using it. Patents do not only protect new devices, they can protect a new and non-obvious way of using one that already exists.

If your team has found a better way to run a known process, that method may be more defensible than you would expect. Worth asking before you assume there is nothing to protect.

General information only, not legal advice, and may be attorney advertising. Legal disclaimer: https://www.leehayes.com/legal

08/28/2026

The USPTO's revised guidance on AI-assisted inventions, effective in late 2025, keeps the rule simple. Only a natural person can be an inventor. AI is a tool, like any other equipment in the lab.

The guidance withdrew the earlier framework that borrowed joint-inventorship factors for the single-person-plus-AI case. What remains is conception, the formation of a definite and permanent idea in a human mind. Running a prompt and accepting the output usually will not meet that bar. Shaping the problem and making the technical choices usually will.

Documentation matters here, because getting inventorship wrong can render a patent unenforceable. Capture who contributed what and which decisions were human-driven. If your team builds with AI in the loop, we can help you set up those records.

General information only, not legal advice, and may be attorney advertising. Legal disclaimer: https://www.leehayes.com/legal

08/26/2026

Since June 3, participation in a standards body can move a US patent application out of turn.

Under the SPARK pilot, Standards Participation and Representation Kudos, 91 Fed. Reg. 33,155 (June 3, 2026), the USPTO will expedite examination of certain applications and ex parte PTAB appeals where a US-domiciled applicant meaningfully participated in a voluntary consensus standards development organization. Eligibility is deliberately narrow: small and medium-sized businesses, universities, and nonprofits.

Two details are worth holding onto. The application being expedited does not have to relate to the standards work at all. And the pilot is capped, running until June 3, 2027 or 200 granted petitions, whichever arrives first.

For smaller companies in standards-heavy sectors, telecom, connected devices, AI infrastructure, this changes the internal math on funding SDO participation. The engineering hours spent in working groups now carry a measurable prosecution benefit, which is the first time procedural speed at the Office has been tied to conduct outside it.

A 200-petition cap rewards the teams that move before the question reaches a budget meeting.

General information only, not legal advice, and may be attorney advertising. Legal disclaimer: https://www.leehayes.com/legal

08/24/2026

Where you enforce a patent can shape the outcome as much as the patent itself. The fight over TOPCon solar cell technology is a clear example.

On March 25, 2026, the International Trade Commission instituted a Section 337 investigation on a complaint from First Solar, which accuses about ten crystalline-silicon manufacturers of infringing U.S. Patent No. 9,130,074. First Solar is asking for a general exclusion order and cease-and-desist orders rather than money damages.

The remedy is the reason. The ITC moves on a fast schedule, and its main tool is exclusion at the border. A general exclusion order can block an entire category of infringing imports, including products from companies that were never named as respondents, which is why an entire industry watches a single filing this closely.

There is a second lesson in how these disputes have unfolded. The same technology has produced different results in different places. Patent challenges have been turned away at the USPTO in one matter, competitor patents have been canceled in another, and a foreign office invalidated a counterpart patent without changing the U.S. rights at all.

For a company with a global supply chain, that means validity and freedom to operate cannot be settled once and assumed everywhere. They have to be worked forum by forum, and the enforcement venue is part of the strategy, not an afterthought.

If your products cross a border and sit in a contested technology, the question worth asking now is whether you know where you stand before a competitor picks the venue for you.

General information only, not legal advice, and may be attorney advertising. Legal disclaimer: https://www.leehayes.com/legal

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