AI Startups Have These Copyright Lawyers on Speed Dial; Bloomberg Law, April 16, 2026

 David Schultz , Bloomberg Law; AI Startups Have These Copyright Lawyers on Speed Dial

"Something similar connects many of the top attorneys representing the artificial intelligence industry in its most consequential battles: their resumes.

The common thread is Durie Tangri. More than 50 attorneys from the defunct Bay Area intellectual property firm are at the center of epic Silicon Valley copyright fights, just more than three years after Morrison Foerster acquired the practice...

“Tech copyright is a small world,” said Joseph Gratz, one of the alums at Morrison.

The Durie Tangri alums have benefited from the demand in tech copyright law, said Gratz, who has appeared in court defending OpenAI in almost two dozen federal lawsuits...

One of the marquee cases Durie Tangri took on was the decade-long copyright infringement suit over Google’s book digitization. Sonal Mehta, a Durie Tangri alum who is now at WilmerHale, said the boutique relished taking on matters that ventured into uncharted territory.

“We weren’t afraid to be operating in gray areas or to be looking at where the law hadn’t fully developed,” Mehta said. “We didn’t need to feel like every argument had to be something that was a cookie cutter argument that had already been made and won 20 times before.”"

Sullivan & Cromwell hires former USPTO head, Federal Circuit judge; Reuters, July 11, 2023

Blake Brittain, Reuters; Sullivan & Cromwell hires former USPTO head, Federal Circuit judge

"Sullivan & Cromwell announced on Tuesday that it has hired former U.S. Patent and Trademark Office director Andrei Iancu and former federal judge Kathleen O'Malley, bolstering the prominent New York-founded law firm's patent practice.

Iancu and O'Malley both joined Sullivan & Cromwell from intellectual property-focused law firm Irell & Manella. Iancu, Irell's managing partner from 2012 to 2018, rejoined the firm in 2021 after heading the USPTO during Donald Trump's presidency. O'Malley joined Irell last year after retiring from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit."

NFTs are creating trademark problems. For these Minnesota lawyers, expertise is a commodity; Star Tribune, March 8, 2023

 Nick Williams, Star Tribune; NFTs are creating trademark problems. For these Minnesota lawyers, expertise is a commodity

"For NFT creators, knowing what they can register for trademark or patent protection is not clear-cut, either. That's a significant piece of the NFT-law equation, considering the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office has received more than 10,000 trademark applications for NFT-related goods and services over the last few years, said Kathi Vidal, undersecretary of commerce for intellectual property and director of the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, during a recent online panel.

"And we expect that number to grow," she said.

The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office and U.S. Copyright Office are working on a study with input from industry experts to determine how the nation should proceed with NFT laws. The study, a response to a request from the U.S. Senate subcommittee on intellectual property, will help officials determine what policies are to be supported, and what position the U.S. takes on the matter, Vidal said."

Artificial Intelligence Keeps IBM Atop 2016 Patent List; CNet, 1/9/17

Stephen Shankland, CNET; Artificial Intelligence Keeps IBM Atop 2016 Patent List:

"Patents are an imperfect measure of prowess in research, development, innovation and ultimately business success. For one thing, it takes a mammoth staff and a lot of intellectual-property lawyers to rank high on the list, so startups won't make it up the list no matter how successful. For another, many patent ideas never see the light of day, or worse, emerge in a patent troll's sketchy legal action trying to extract licensing fees from big companies.

Nevertheless, patents remain an important reflection of how much a company is investing today into the technology of tomorrow. It's notable that IBM topped the list for the 24th year in a row."