Guide
How to Trademark Your Business: The Complete 2026 Guide
How to trademark a business in 2026, explained step by step: clearance searches, the USPTO application, current fees, timelines, renewals, and enforcement.
Copyright · Trademarks · Patents · Trade Secrets · Publicity
An Intellectual Property Law Journal
Rigorous, plain-English analysis of the decisions shaping intellectual property — paired with practical guides for the founders, creators, and counsel who have to live by them.
- 306case analyses
- 83practical guides
- 5IP disciplines
Plain-English answers for founders and creators — what protection you need, what it costs, and what to do when there's a problem.
Guide
Which IP Protection Do You Need? A Founder's Guide
Wondering which IP protection do I need? Compare trademark, copyright, patent, and trade secret in plain English so founders and creators can decide what to file first.
Guide
Intellectual Property in California: A 2026 Guide for Founders & Creators
A plain-English guide to intellectual property in California: the non-compete ban, right of publicity, AI digital-replica laws, NIL, trade secrets, and takedowns.
Guide
AI and Intellectual Property: A 2026 Guide
A plain-English 2026 guide to AI and intellectual property: who owns AI output, copyright on AI art, training-data lawsuits, deepfakes, and contract clauses.
Guide
The Creator's Guide to Copyright (2026)
Plain-English copyright for creators: when protection begins, your exclusive rights, when to register, fair use, licensing, and protecting your work online.
Guide
The Startup IP Playbook (2026)
A plain-English guide to startup intellectual property: the four IP types founders own, how to keep the company (not founders) owning it, and what investors check.
AI & Copyright
Bartz v. Anthropic: Transformative Training, Unforgivable Acquisition
Judge Alsup held that training a large language model on books is 'exceedingly transformative' fair use — while refusing to extend that blessing to the pirated library that fed it. The $1.5 billion settlement that followed shows where the real exposure lies.
June 24, 2026
AI & Copyright
Kadrey v. Meta: A Fair-Use Win That Reads Like a Plaintiffs' Brief
Two days after Bartz, Judge Chhabria also found AI training to be fair use — but went out of his way to say the result reflected a failure of advocacy, not a vindication of the practice. His 'market dilution' theory is the doctrine to watch.
June 22, 2026
AI & Copyright
Thomson Reuters v. Ross: The First Refusal of Fair Use in the AI Era
Before the generative-AI rulings, a Delaware court rejected fair use for using copyrighted material to build an AI legal-research tool — and pointedly distinguished the software cases the technology industry had relied upon. Its reach is narrower than its reputation.
June 19, 2026
Trademarks & the First Amendment
Vidal v. Elster: A Unanimous Judgment, a Divided Court, and the Limits of History
The Supreme Court upheld the Lanham Act's bar on registering marks that use a living person's name without consent. The 9-0 result conceals a methodological fracture over whether history alone can resolve a First Amendment question.
June 17, 2026
Remedies
Dewberry Group v. Dewberry Engineers: Corporate Separateness Survives the Lanham Act
A unanimous Supreme Court held that a trademark plaintiff awarded the 'defendant's profits' may recover only the named defendant's profits — not those of its non-party affiliates. The result is a $43 million award vacated and a lesson in how to plead.
June 11, 2026
Distinctiveness & the Spectrum
When a Generic Word Buys a Domain: USPTO v. Booking.com and the Limits of Per Se Genericness
The Supreme Court rejected a categorical rule that 'generic.com' terms are unregistrable, holding that consumer perception alone determines whether such a composite is generic—reshaping distinctiveness analysis for the domain-name economy.
April 29, 2026
Enablement & Written Description
Amgen v. Sanofi: The Enablement Tax on Functional Genus Claims
A unanimous Supreme Court invalidated Amgen's antibody patents for failing to enable the full scope of what they claimed. The decision revives a demanding, century-old conception of the patent bargain with particular force in the life sciences.
June 8, 2026
Design Patents
LKQ v. GM: The Federal Circuit Dismantles the Design-Patent Obviousness Test
Sitting en banc, the Federal Circuit overruled the four-decade-old Rosen-Durling framework and folded design-patent obviousness into the flexible Graham analysis used for utility patents. Design patents just became easier to challenge.
June 5, 2026
Damages
EcoFactor v. Google: The Federal Circuit Sharpens the Gatekeeper's Knife on Damages
Sitting en banc, the Federal Circuit threw out a patent-damages verdict because the royalty expert's per-unit rate rested on lump-sum licenses that did not support it. The decision is a Rule 702 warning to the patent-damages bar.
June 3, 2026
Damages & Injunctive Relief
Appian v. Pegasystems: How a $2 Billion Trade-Secret Verdict Came Undone
Liability stood, but the largest damages award in Virginia history collapsed over a single jury instruction. The case is a masterclass in trade-secret causation — and a warning that revenue is not damages.
June 26, 2026
What Qualifies as a Trade Secret
When 'Everything Is a Trade Secret' Is Nothing: Sysco Machinery v. DCS USA
The Fourth Circuit affirms dismissal of a DTSA complaint that defined its trade secrets three ways, holding that sweeping definitions fail the particularity that the statute's secrecy and value elements presuppose.
February 25, 2026
Reasonable Secrecy Measures
Turret Labs v. CargoSprint: When Locking the Windows Isn't Enough
The Second Circuit affirmed dismissal of a software trade-secret claim because the owner delegated access control to a licensee and never required anyone downstream to keep the secret.
February 23, 2026
AI, Deepfakes & Digital Replicas
Lehrman v. Lovo: Why the Right of Publicity — Not Copyright — Governs AI Voice Cloning
A federal court let voice actors' right-of-publicity and contract claims against an AI voice-cloning company proceed while dismissing their copyright theories. The decision maps the legal terrain for performers facing synthetic replicas of their voices.
June 17, 2026
Name, Image & Likeness
Hart v. Electronic Arts: The Transformative-Use Test and an Athlete's Likeness in a Video Game
The Third Circuit held that EA's photorealistic use of a college quarterback's avatar in NCAA Football was not transformative enough to defeat his right of publicity — adopting the transformative-use test as the circuit's framework for likeness-in-media disputes.
January 27, 2026
Voice & Sound-Alikes
Midler v. Ford Motor Co.: When a Sound-Alike Steals an Identity
The Ninth Circuit held that deliberately imitating a widely known singer's distinctive voice to sell a product is a California tort — even though a voice itself is not copyrightable.
January 24, 2026