Bites (noun): more meaty news to sink your teeth into.
Barks (noun): peripheral noise worth your attention.
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Teresa Summer’s (Summers Law Group) 8-year old Part Pomeranian – Dinky.
This week in Other Barks & Bites: the Federal Circuit rules that the omission of a co-inventor from a patent invalidates those patent claims if inventorship cannot be corrected; President Donald Trump signs an executive order placing 100% tariffs on drug companies who do not onshore production of patented pharmaceuticals; U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) Director John Squires vacates a series of patent validity challenges filed by TikTok for failure to prove that Chinese government entities are not real-parties-in-interest; Elon Musk’s SpaceX is reportedly in talks with Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund to retain PIF’s 1% stake for $5 billion; China’s IP agency extends local collaborative efforts with the European countries of Hungary and Finland; Meta Platforms completes government filings announcing a new round of 200 layoffs; and Dina Kallay, the U.S. Department of Justice’s Deputy Assistant AG for Antitrust, tells attendees at LeadershIP 2026 that the DOJ prefers standards that are being developed with FRAND obligations over other consortia.
Bites
President Trump Signs Executive Order Establishing 100% Tariffs on Patent Pharmaceuticals – On Thursday, April 2, President Donald Trump signed an executive order entitled “Adjusting Imports of Pharmaceuticals and Pharmaceutical Ingredients Into the United States” establishing tariffs of 100% on imports of patented pharmaceuticals and their ingredients to be levied in the next 120 days against 17 drugmakers including AbbVie, Bristol Myers Squibb, Gilead, Novartis and Novo Nordisk unless they commit to agreements to onshore production within the United States. Companies doing so only face a 20% tariff rate that will increase to 100% within four years unless those companies also agree to provide their patented drugs on a Most-Favored-Nation (MFN) basis to American consumers.
CAFC Holds That Omission of Co-Inventor Invalidates Patent – On Thursday, April 2, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit issued a precedential ruling in Fortress Iron, LP v. Digger Specialties, Inc. affirming the Northern District of Indiana’s grant of summary judgment invalidating Fortress Iron’s patent claims to certain fencing and railing technologies for omitting a co-inventor from the patent. The Federal Circuit agreed with the Northern Indiana district court that the unnamed co-inventor was a “part(y) concerned” with the patent matters at issue in district court under 35 U.S.C. § 256(b), which shall not invalidate the patent if the error can be corrected pursuant to Section 256(a) but Fortress was unable to locate the unnamed inventor to add him as an inventor to the patent.
Fourth Circuit Affirms Intellectual Property Claims Barred By Prior State Court Order – On Wednesday, April 1, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit issued a ruling in Clear Touch Interactive, Inc. v. The Ockers Company affirming the District of South Carolina’s grant of summary judgment that trademark infringement and other intellectual property claims filed by Clear Touch in federal court were barred by res judicata. The appellate court that Clear Touch’s federal trademark claims, filed in apparent violation of a joint settlement to the state court proceedings that Clear Touch never formally dismissed, were barred by the state court’s dismissal with prejudice of the state court action preventing all counterclaims related to the litigation from being filed, the dismissal occurring after Clear Touch filed its federal suit.
USPTO Director Squires Vacates TikTok IPRs Under New Tianma Microelectronics RPI Standard – On Monday, March 30, U.S. Patent and Trademark Office Director John Squires issued a ruling vacating decisions to institute a series of seven petitions for between parties review (IPR) proceedings filed by social media giant TikTok at the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) to challenge patent claims owned by Cellspin Soft. Determining that TikTik did not carry its burden to establish that a foreign government, namely entities of the Chinese national government, was not a real-party-in-interest (RPI) at the time that TikTok’s petition was filed, leading Director Squires to vacate the IPRs under the recent PTAB precedential decision Tianma Microelectronics v. LG Displaywhich applies the U.S. Supreme Court’s rule against U.S. government entities participating in IPR proceedings from 2019’s Return Mail v. United States Postal Service equally to foreign governmental entities.
SCOTUS Denies Agilent’s Cert Petition Challenging Patentee Burden to Prove Prior Art is Nonenabling – On Monday, March 30, the U.S. Supreme Court issued an order list showing that the nation’s highest court had denied a petition for writ of certiorari filed by analytics instrument developer Agilent Technologies challenging the Federal Circuit’s decision last June affirming the PTAB’s invalidation of patent claims claiming chemically modified synthetic CRISPR guide RNAs. Agilent’s cert petition, filed with the Supreme Court last November, asked if printed publications should be presumed enabling as prior art such that the burden to prove nonenablement rests with the patentee, and whether the Federal Circuit’s 2005 ruling in Rasmussen v. SmithKline Beecham Corp.which holds that proof of efficacy is not required for a prior art reference to be enabling for purposes of anticipation, should be vacated or significantly narrowed.
DAAG Kallay Voices DOJ’s Preference for FRAND Obligations in Standards Development – On Wednesday, March 25, the Center for Strategic & International Studies (CSIS) held its LeadershIP 2026 conference on intellectual property and national security policy featuring several important individuals on IP policy in U.S. government including Dina Kallay, the U.S. Department of Justice’s (DoJ) Deputy Assistant Attorney General for International, Policy and Appellate, Antitrust Division. During a panel discussion on antitrust and standards development, Kallay responded to a question about the creation of new royalty-free patent consortia like the Alliance for Open Media noting that the DoJ “tolerates standards development… thanks to the FRAND or RAND safety valve,” indicating that the nation’s antitrust enforcement community looks to the existence of fair, reasonable and non-discriminatory (FRAND) obligations to ensure there is no unfair exercise of market power.
Barks
CNIPA Extends Focal Point Mechanism Pilot in Hungary, Launches Pilot in Finland – On Friday, April 3, China’s National Intellectual Property Administration (CNIPA) announced that it had decided to extend its Focal Point Mechanism pilot project with Hungary’s IP office, providing five years of consulting services on IP issues to Chinese enterprises operating in Hungary and vice versa, and that it had launched another such pilot program with Finland’s IP office.
EUIPO to Support EU Commission Efforts Under DSA to Combat Online Infringement – On Wednesday, April 1, the European Union Intellectual Property Office (EUIPO) announced that it it had entered into a five-year agreement with the European Commission to provide consultative support on intellectual property and related technical support to assist the Commission’s efforts under the Digital Services Act (DSA) to address IP infringements online made available by very large online platforms and search engines accessed by a monthly average of more than 45 million users in the EU.
Judge Simmons Revokes Naturalization of Couple Sharing Medical Trade Secrets With China – On Tuesday, March 31, the U.S. Department of Justice (DoJ) announced that U.S. District Judge James E. Simmons Jr. of the Southern District of California entered an order revoking the U.S. citizenship of Li Chen and Yu Zhou, a husband and wife from China who became naturalized citizens after coming to the U.S. on work visas to serve as scientific researchers with the Nationwide Children’s Hospital, where they worked on exosome isolation technologies they are accused of stealing and personally benefitting from.
Judge Brinkema Grants Fair Use Defense for Negative Usage of AOC Photo – On Monday, March 30, U.S. District Judge Leonie Brinkema of the Eastern District of Virginia issued a memorandum opinion granting conservative news outlet Free Beacon’s motion to dismiss copyright claims filed by a photographer over the unauthorized use of a photograph of Democratic politician Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, finding that the use of the photograph in association with a series of articles criticizing the politician made a fair use of the copyrighted photo.
EUIPO Announces 3.2 Million EU Trademarks Filed in 30 Years of EUTM System – On Monday, March 30, the EUIPO announced that, in the 30 years since the agency launched what would become known as the European Union Trade Mark (EUTM) system, the agency has seen trademark application filings eclipse 3.2 million thanks to the filing of nearly 200,000 trademark applications in 2025.
CRB Issues Adjustments to Royalties for Sound Recordings by New Subscription Services – On Monday, March 30, the Copyright Royalty Board (CRB) announced a final rule adjusting royalty rates for statutory licenses under both 17 U.S.C. § 112(e) and 17 U.S.C. § 114(f) for digital performances of sound recordings by new subscription services and the making of ephemeral recordings to facilitate those transmissions, with adjustments based on the Consumer Price Index for All Urban Consumers (CPI-U).
This Week on Wall Street
Reuters Reports Saudi Arabia’s PIF Eyeing $5B Stake in SpaceX IPO – On Thursday, April 2, international news outlet Reuters reported based on knowledge from people familiar with the matter that American aeronautics firm SpaceX has had conversations with Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund (PIF) to take an anchor stake of $5 billion in the company ahead of its initial public offering (IPO), with Reuters reporting that this investment would prevent dilution of PIF’s current 1% stake in SpaceX.
Meta Filing Shows Another 200 Jobs Will Be Permanently Eliminated – On Thursday, April 2, news outlets reported that social media giant Meta Platforms had completed a pair of filings with California’s Employment Development Department indicating that the company planned to permanently shed almost 200 workers total from its Burlingame and Sunnyvale locations, raising corporate layoffs to around 700 during a year when Meta is also investing $135 billion in artificial intelligence infrastructure.