Can You Actually Keep It Secret? Trade Secrets When Reverse Engineering Gets Cheap In a recent piece I argued that agentic coding is draining your moat. When a capable team with the right tools can reach feature parity in days, the advantage of shipping first stops being defensible and becomes table stakes. That argument has […]
The Menu Changes, Not the Price A Few Thoughts on Patent Prosecution in 5, 10, and 15 Years, for In-House and Outside Counsel At a recent conference I attended, a panel was asked what patent prosecution might look like in five, ten, and fifteen years, for both in-house and outside counsel. I have some thoughts. […]
In the world of patent law, a single claim can be worth a fortune. A real-life example of this can be found in the ongoing IP dispute between Xencor, Inc. and Alexion Pharmaceuticals, Inc., where Xencor’s recently issued patent, which issued with just one claim, underlies Xencor’s expectations for 100-120 million dollars in additional US […]
The quantum computing revolution is generating groundbreaking innovations – and equally complex patent prosecution challenges. Among these challenges, enablement requirements under 35 U.S.C. § 112(a) have emerged as a particularly thorny issue for patent practitioners working in this field.
Recent decisions from the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) reveal a troubling pattern: even well-represented corporate applicants are struggling to satisfy enablement requirements for quantum computing inventions. Understanding why these applications failed – and what succeeded – offers critical guidance for practitioners navigating this emerging technology landscape.
If you have been hearing the phrase “quantum computing” more and more lately and wondering what it actually means for your patent practice, you are not alone. Quantum computing is a subset of quantum technology, which is one of the most rapidly developing fields in science and engineering today. Quantum technology spans sensing, communication, and computing technologies, with quantum computing being the fastest growing quantum technology.
On February 6, 2026, the Federal Circuit affirmed summary judgment of invalidity under 35 U.S.C. § 101 for all asserted claims across six patents in Innovaport LLC v. Target Corp., No. 24-1545 (Fed. Cir. Feb. 6, 2026) (nonprecedential). The patents claimed systems and methods for providing product location information within a retail store: receiving a customer’s query, searching a database containing product locations and related information, and returning results that included cross-referenced product suggestions. The court found the claims directed to the abstract idea of “collecting, analyzing, retrieving, and displaying information” at Alice step one, then concluded at step two that the additional elements added no “inventive concept.”
A practical way to refill it: inventions.md and fast (detailed!) provisional filings.
In brief:
Agentic coding collapses the time and capital advantages that used to protect early-stage software companies. When competitors can reach feature parity in days, “shipping faster” stops being a moat and becomes table stakes.
One of the few levers you can pull early is intellectual property, but only if you capture inventions while you build.
The simplest workflow I’ve found: instruct your coding agent to surface patentable technical ideas and log them in an inventions.md file, then file provisional patent applications quickly on the ideas that survive a rough patentability screen.
As a kid growing up in the 1980s, I was captivated by the emerging world of home computers. I had a TI-99/4A first and later upgraded to a Commodore 64. I spent countless hours as a child writing programs in BASIC, trying to make these first home computers do various things, and absorbed in the possibilities they represented. In reflecting on the evolution of computers over the decades since those childhood experiences, I’ve come to the realization that one of the major exponential advances in computer technology for users was when home computers became widely available. That was the biggest change in our lives that came from computers and, in my view, far more transformative than any of the incremental improvements that followed.
The United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) has introduced a new Streamlined Claim Set Pilot Program designed to expedite examination of qualifying utility patent applications. The program aims to reduce pendency and improve examination efficiency by focusing examiner resources on concise, clearly structured claim sets.