IP Law Daily, WORTH NOTING—Other IP law developments, (Feb 27, 2026)

By WK Editorial Staff

A periodic roundup of other items of interest to the Intellectual Property community.

PATENT—Fed. Cir.: The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit vacated and remanded a decision of the Patent Trial and Appeal Board that a challenged claim of a patent related to “generating and sending a hot link to a device” was not unpatentable. Google Inc. challenged 22 claims of the patent in an inter partes review, and the Board determined that all claims but one were unpatentable as obvious. Google appealed with respect to the remaining claim, and the appellate court agreed with Google that the Board improperly failed to address Google’s arguments with respect to one of the claim’s limitations. According to the Federal Circuit, the Board’s silence on this point ran afoul of its obligation to articulate an explanation that would enable a reviewing court to assess whether the Board’s decision is arbitrary, capricious, an abuse of discretion, or unsupported by substantial evidence. The court was unable to discern the basis upon which the Board concluded that Google did not show that the limitation would have been obvious over the prior art. The court directed the Board, on remand, to explain its reasoning with respect to the limitation (Google LLC v. Wildseed Mobile, LLC, No. 24-2178 (Fed. Cir. Feb. 13, 2026)).

PUBLICITY RIGHTS—5th Cir.: For purposes of a right-of-publicity claim under Texas law, an individual did not gain possession of her daughter’s postmortem right of publicity when the state probate court awarded her the property within the daughter’s estate, according to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit in a per curiam opinion. Texas law provides that an individual’s property right in the use of the individual’s name, voice, signature, photograph, or likeness after the death of the individual is freely transferable before or after death. Because there was no evidence of any contract or other conveyance of the publicity rights at issue before the daughter’s death, her statutory right of publicity transferred automatically by statute to her husband (who had pleaded guilty of murdering her). There was no indication that a court had imposed a constructive trust in favor of the complaining individual (the mother of the murder victim), so she failed to show that she owned the daughter’s post-mortem right of publicity (Hosseini-Browder v. Hosseini, No. 25-50190 (5th Cir. Feb. 24, 2026)).

TRADEMARK—3d Cir.: Mortgage lender Amres Corporation could not go forward with trademark infringement claims against a spun-off company and one of its prior employees because neither used Amres’s trademark in a manner that was likely to confuse customers, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit has determined in a nonprecedential disposition. An agreement between Amres’s co-owners provided that Amres redeemed 50% of its issued outstanding shares from one co-owner who left to form a new business, giving the other co-owner complete ownership of Amres. In return, the leaving co-owner “or his designated business entity” received “the rights to conduct ALL business activities without prejudice or restriction in direct competition to existing [Amres] business activities not limited to” the Amres Wholesale and Ambridge divisions, “but the divisions’ names and/or business entities [] remain[ed] under the exclusive control of [Amres].” The new company, Nextres LLC, allegedly displayed an Amres trademark near a Nextres trademark in emails to Amres’s existing and potential customers and industry leaders, stating that Amres was changing its name to Nextres or that the two entities were affiliated. In the appellate court’s view, “Amres’s complaint, read alongside the Agreement, evinces the opposite of consumer confusion.” The emails merely clarified to customers the nature of the intricate spin-off and transition period. Explained the court, “under the terms of the Agreement, customers were supposed to associate Nextres with Amres” (Amres Corp. v. Nextres LLC, No. 25-1197 (3d Cir. Feb. 17, 2026)).

COPYRIGHT NEWS: A new group registration option known as Group Registration for Two-Dimensional Artwork (GR2D) was recently rolled out by the U.S. Copyright Office. GR2D allows artists to register between two and 20 published two-dimensional artworks with one filing fee. All works submitted within the group registration application must be published within the same calendar year. The application, which became available for use on February 17, results from a final rule issued by the Office on December 19, 2025.

PATENT NEWS: A USPTO patent examiner has agreed to pay $500,000 to resolve allegations that she violated conflict-of-interest rules while employed by the agency, the Department of Justice announced. The settlement resolves allegations that, between January 2019 and May 2022, the examiner worked personally and substantially on at least nine patent applications submitted by companies in which she had a financial interest, in violation of the Ethics Reform Act of 1989. As part of the settlement, the examiner has agreed to pay a civil penalty to resolve allegations that her conduct violated conflict-of-interest prohibitions for federal employees.

Attorneys: Dan L. Bagatell (Perkins Coie LLP) for Google LLC. Robert Kramer (Kramer Alberti Lim & Tonkovich LLP) for Wildseed Mobile, LLC. Michael D. Paul (McKinnie & Paul, P.L.L.C.) for Mahmoud Hosseini. Predrag Filipovic (Law Offices of Predrag Filipovic) for Amres Corp. Anton Kaminsky (Kaminsky Law LLC) for Nextres LLC.

Companies: Google LLC; Wildseed Mobile, LLC; Amres Corp.; Nextres LLC

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