Intellectual property law

Intellectual property law

Creators, beware: just because it's online doesn't mean it's fair game. In this episode of The Briefing, Scott Hervey and Richard Buckley break down one of the most misunderstood areas of copyright law-fair use. In this episode, they cover: What makes a use "transformative"? Why credit alone doesn't protect you How recent court rulings (Warhol v. Goldsmith) are changing the game Tips to stay on the right side of the law

Although Alexi has not yet formally responded to the lawsuit, its founder and CEO Mark Doble told me yesterday afternoon that he denies any wrongdoing and that he believes the lawsuit is based on a misunderstanding of the original licensing agreement that came to light during Clio's recent closing of its purchase of vLex, which had merged with Fastcase in 2023.

Applying precedent from both the U.S. Supreme Court and the Federal Circuit's predecessor, the Court of Customs and Patent Appeals (CCPA), the appellate court found that Seagen's disclosure on the original patent application claiming its antibody-drug conjugate cancer treatment was too broad to give the later-filed patent-at-issue the original application's priority date, and also required undue experimentation to discover effective drug combinations.

Some justices were skeptical of arguments that ISPs should have no legal obligation under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) to terminate an account when a user's IP address has been repeatedly flagged for downloading pirated music. But justices also seemed hesitant to rule in favor of record labels, with some of the debate focusing on how ISPs should handle large accounts like universities where there could be tens of thousands of users.

In May 2025, President Trump terminated Copyright Register Shira Perlmutter from office, one day after she released a report concluding that in some situations AI training on copyrighted works scraped from the internet does not qualify as fair use. Most recently, the Trump Administration has asked the Supreme Court to vacate that injunction in Blanche v. Perlmutter, No. 25A478,

The case then went quiet, save for Siemens arguing that its software licenses mean it can move the matter to Germany instead of the US court for the District of Delaware in which VMware brought its case. Siemens also argued that this was a contractual matter, not a copyright claim. On Wednesday, VMware fired back with filings that argue Siemens' interpretation of its software licenses is wrong and the agreements do not allow the case to be heard in Germany, as the defendant has sought.

So allow me to flag one new item on the table that may have gone unnoticed: Warner Music Group's legal settlement with AI music startup Suno. The deal, announced on Tuesday, ends Warner's copyright lawsuit against Suno and establishes a partnership that will let consumers create AI-generated music with the voices, compositions, names, and likenesses of any Warner Music artists who choose to participate.

The case concerned the training, development and deployment of Stability AI's "Stable Diffusion" generative AI model and, as one of the first and to date most high-profile intellectual property ( IP) infringement claims against an AI developer to make it all the way to trial in the UK courts, was originally envisaged as having potential to provide much-needed wide-ranging judicial guidance on the application of existing UK IP law in the field of AI.

Three new mandamus petitions recently arrived at the Federal Circuit, each attempting to navigate around the court's November 6 decisions that rejected challenges to the USPTO's expanded use of discretionary denials. The new petitions raise arguments their counsel contend are distinct from those already rejected in In re Motorola Solutions, Inc., No. 2025-134 (Fed. Cir. Nov. 6, 2025) (precedential).

The suit was filed in Alexandria, Virginia, and accuses Tesla of knowingly infringing upon five patents related to robotics systems for self-driving vehicles. The company said its founder, Paul Perrone, developed general-purpose robotics operating systems for individual robots and automated devices. Perrone Robotics claims that all Tesla vehicles utilizing the company's Autopilot suite within the last six years infringe the five patents, according to a report from Reuters. Tesla's new Safety Report shows Autopilot is nine times safer than humans