On 6 July 2026, the Casablanca Commercial Court issued two rulings barring Tecno Mobile and Itel Mobility, subsidiaries of Transsion Holdings, from selling smartphones in Morocco that were found to infringe Ericsson’s 4G and 5G cellular standard-essential patents. The decisions are being described as Africa’s first SEP injunctions, reached roughly six months after Ericsson filed suit in December 2025.The immediate commercial effect was overtaken by a subsequent settlement: on 8 July, Ericsson and Transsion announced a multi-year global patent cross-licence and agreed to withdraw their...
Following the implementation of the 13th edition of the Nice Classification, the Intellectual Property Office of New Zealand (IPONZ) has updated its Conflicting Goods and Services List and the related Conflicting Class Table. The change that deserves close attention is the wider treatment of Class 9 goods: software, electronics and digitally enabled products are now more visibly connected with traditional product categories when similarity is assessed.This is guidance rather than a rigid rule, but it will affect how applicants read clearance results in New Zealand. A brand used for...
Discussion around deferred publication of UK designs has moved faster than the official text. The headline figure catching everyone’s attention is 30 months. Yet the verified position is narrower: the current UK regime still allows deferment for up to 12 months, and the 2025 government consultation compared 12, 18 and 30-month models while signalling a preference for 18 months rather than an already launched 30-month pilot.Another point is no longer hypothetical. Since 1 April 2026, the DF2C fee to register a previously deferred design has been set at £50. For fast fashion and consumer...
On July 23, 2026, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit partly reversed a district court’s patent-ineligibility ruling in Ceiva Opco, LLC v. Amazon.com, Inc.. The court held that claim 19 of U.S. Patent No. 6,442,573 did more than claim the result of remotely sending pictures. By using a user interface physically separate from a digital picture frame to upload images and modify device settings, the claim recited a specific solution to the technical problem of having to operate the frame locally. It was therefore patent eligible at Alice step one. The court nevertheless affirmed...
The USPTO has materially changed how design patent applications for graphical user interfaces are expected to establish their connection to an article of manufacture. On March 13, 2026, the Office published supplemental examination guidance for computer-generated electronic images and icons, effective immediately for pending and future matters. By mid-August, as examiner training and practitioner implementation spread, the change was increasingly being treated in practice as part of routine examination. The timeline matters: March 13 is the formal effective date of the guidance, while...
An audio patent dispute has moved into USITC investigation 337-TA-1521. The notice issued on 16 September 2026 records the Commission’s decision to institute proceedings on 15 September. BoomCloud 360 alleges that imports and sales infringe three US patents; the respondents are Apple, Samsung Electronics, Samsung Electronics America and Google. A limited exclusion order and cease-and-desist orders are requested remedies. Institution does not establish infringement or patent validity and does not itself impose an import or sales ban.For electronics businesses, the practical question is which...
On 9 October 2026 the US International Trade Commission (USITC) instituted investigation No. 337-TA-1526 (News Release 26-145), on a complaint by Vicor Corporation of the United States. The technology in dispute is vertical power delivery (VPD) — stacking power modules directly beneath high-current processors to shorten the power path — widely used to power data-centre server chips such as AI accelerators, GPUs and CPUs. Vicor asks the USITC to issue a limited exclusion order and cease-and-desist orders.
On 9 October the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) sued Amazon Web Services (AWS) for patent infringement in the US District Court for the District of Massachusetts (case 1:26-cv-14600), alleging that hardware-security technology used on AWS-related platforms infringes two US patents MIT holds — US 7,681,103 and US 7,818,569. The case is at the complaint stage and the court has made no finding of infringement (reported by Reuters on 12 October).The two patents come from MIT's physical unclonable function (PUF) technology, invented by MIT professor Srinivas Devadas and his...
Apple on 13 October asked a federal court in the Southern District of California to throw out a $5.7 billion patent-infringement award a jury handed the haptics firm Taction Technology last month — the largest patent jury verdict in US history.## A record-breaking numberOn 25 September 2026, a San Diego jury found that the Taptic Engine haptic component in Apple's iPhone and Apple Watch infringed two Taction patents (claims 17 and 19 of US Patent 10,659,885, and claim 16 of 10,820,117) and awarded $5,721,961,750.
On 30 October the US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit affirmed summary judgment of non-infringement in Google v. Sonos (No. 2025-1346), an appeal from the Northern District of California. Google said Sonos smart speakers infringed its U.S. Patent No. 7,899,187, but both infringement theories failed on claim construction. The decision is nonprecedential and limited to this patent and this appeal.## The patentThe '187 patent, titled "Domain-Based Digital-Rights Management System with Easy and Secure Device Enrollment", groups devices on one account into a domain that...
