Earlier this year, the USPTO designated as informational two recent Director decisions involving licensing activities, highlighting the evolving nature of “settled expectations” in discretionary denial determinations.  The decisions—Apple Inc. v. Allani (IPR2025-00856) and Alliance Laundry Systems v. PayRange (IPR2025-00950)—reached opposite outcomes, but both demonstrate how licensing-related factors can significantly influence whether the Director exercises discretion to deny institution. In Apple v. Allani, Patent Owner sought discretionary denial of Apple’s petitions challenging two patents.  Patent Owner argued that the challenged [...]

Are your ChatGPT, Claude, and Gemini prompts and responses safe from discovery? Recent decisions shed light on the issue to reveal when your AI chat history can be targeted in discovery and when it remains off-limits. How current rules are being applied to frontier generative AI and what every company, in-house counsel, and law firm must do to avoid an AI discovery disaster. To understand the latest rules of the road for AI discovery, you [...]

The ground of “patent ineligibility” has been applied fairly widely in US patent practice. However, a recent decision of the Federal Circuit Court in REGENXBIO, Inc. v. Sarepta Therapeutics, Inc., No. 24-01408 (Fed. Cir. 2026) (“REGENXBIO v. Sarepta”) provides welcome relief for applicants seeking to protect biotech inventions in the USA. The Federal Circuit has held that the genetically engineered host cells for producing gene therapy products claimed in REGENXBIO’s U.S. Patent No. 10,526,617 (“the ‘617 patent”) are [...]