Intellectual property lawsuit news in 2026 is dominated by AI copyright fights, a cluster of Supreme Court rulings that redrew liability lines across copyright, patent, and trademark law, and a record year for patent damages. Below is what has actually moved, who won, and what remains open.
AI Copyright Cases Lead the Docket
More than 70 active copyright lawsuits now target AI companies over the use of protected works to train large language models and image generators. The central question courts are still working through: whether training an AI on copyrighted material is fair use, and whether the answer changes when the material came from pirate sites.
The largest resolution so far is Bartz v. Anthropic. A California federal court ruled in June 2025 that training an AI model is “transformative” enough to qualify as fair use, but that storing pirated copies of books downloaded from sites like Library Genesis is not. The case settled for $1.5 billion, roughly $3,000 per work, covering nearly 500,000 books. Anthropic also agreed to destroy the pirated datasets.
Other courts have split on the fair use question. In Kadrey v. Meta, a Northern District of California judge found Meta’s training of LLaMA to be “highly transformative” fair use, though claims about Meta’s role in uploading pirated books via BitTorrent remain active. In Thomson Reuters v. Ross Intelligence, a Delaware court granted partial summary judgment to Thomson Reuters, ruling that copying Westlaw headnotes to train a legal search tool was not fair use. That case is now before the Third Circuit in what will be the first appellate ruling on AI fair use.
A multidistrict litigation against OpenAI, In re OpenAI, Inc. Copyright Infringement Litigation, is consolidating a dozen cases in the Southern District of New York. The court has ordered OpenAI to produce tens of millions of output logs in discovery. Disney, Universal, and Warner Bros. have separately sued image generator Midjourney for allegedly training on copyrighted characters without permission.
Music Labels and AI Generators
The major record labels sued AI music generators Suno and Udio in mid-2024. Since then, Universal Music Group and Warner Music Group have each settled with one or both platforms, securing licensing agreements and multimillion-dollar payments. Sony Music is the only major label still actively litigating against both services. A fair-use ruling in the Sony case is expected in the summer of 2026 and could set the template for whether training AI on copyrighted recordings requires a license.
Music publishers also expanded their suit against Anthropic in January 2026, alleging the company trained Claude on more than 20,000 musical compositions sourced from piracy sites. The plaintiffs are seeking over $3 billion in damages.
Publishers Sue Meta and a Pirate Site
In May 2026, five major publishers and novelist Scott Turow filed a class-action copyright suit against Meta and CEO Mark Zuckerberg in the Southern District of New York. The complaint in Elsevier Inc. et al. v. Meta Platforms alleges Meta downloaded millions of copyrighted works from piracy sites including LibGen and Anna’s Archive to train its Llama models, and that Zuckerberg personally authorized the practice. Meta has said it will “fight this lawsuit aggressively,” arguing that training AI on copyrighted material qualifies as fair use.
On June 16, 2026, thirteen publishers filed a separate lawsuit against the website WeLib, which allegedly hosts over 43 million books and 98 million papers. According to the complaint, WeLib launched in 2025 by copying the source code and roughly 150 million files from Anna’s Archive and charges users up to $90 per month for “fast downloads.” The publishers noted that major AI developers have reportedly used sites like WeLib as sources of training data.
Can an AI Be an Author or Inventor?
On March 2, 2026, the U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear Thaler v. Perlmutter, effectively settling the question of whether AI can be a copyright “author” under current law. The lower courts had ruled that copyright requires human authorship, and the Supreme Court’s refusal to intervene leaves that requirement in place. The same researcher, Stephen Thaler, had previously lost a parallel challenge on the patent side, where the Federal Circuit held that the Patent Act limits inventorship to natural persons.
The U.S. Copyright Office reinforced the principle in January 2026 when it filed a brief supporting its refusal to register the AI-assisted artwork Théâtre D’Opéra Spatial, arguing that AI-generated elements and text prompts do not constitute the kind of human-authored expression copyright protects.
Supreme Court Rulings That Changed the Rules
Cox Communications and ISP Copyright Liability
On March 25, 2026, the Supreme Court unanimously reversed a $1 billion jury verdict against Cox Communications in Cox Communications v. Sony Music Entertainment. The case asked whether an internet service provider can be held liable for its subscribers’ music piracy simply by continuing to provide them service. Justice Thomas, writing for the majority, held that contributory copyright liability requires more than mere knowledge of infringement. A provider must either “affirmatively induce” the infringement or provide a service “tailored to that infringement” and incapable of substantial noninfringing uses. Since Cox did neither, the Court ruled it was not liable. Justice Sotomayor concurred but warned that ISPs could face liability in different contexts if they take affirmative steps to encourage infringement.
Skinny Labels and Generic Drugs
On June 4, 2026, the Court issued another unanimous ruling in Hikma Pharmaceuticals v. Amarin Pharma. Amarin, the maker of the cardiovascular drug Vascepa, had sued generic manufacturer Hikma for allegedly inducing doctors to prescribe the generic version for a patented use that Hikma’s “skinny label” had carved out. Justice Jackson, writing for the Court, held that Amarin failed to state a plausible claim. Complying with labeling requirements, describing a product as a generic equivalent, or citing public sales data cannot serve as the sole basis for an inducement claim. The ruling protects generic manufacturers from being forced into a “rock and a hard place” where following the law is treated as evidence of illegal conduct.
Trade Secrets: Tata Consultancy Services
On June 15, 2026, the Supreme Court declined to review a $168.5 million trade secrets judgment against Tata Consultancy Services in its long-running dispute with Computer Sciences Corp. (now DXC Technology). The case alleged that TCS stole trade secrets CSC had shared with a mutual customer, Transamerica Corp. The Fifth Circuit had already rejected TCS’s appeal challenging the damages calculation and punitive damages ratio. Following the Supreme Court’s denial, TCS announced a one-time charge of $70 million, bringing its total exposure to roughly $220 million.
Trademark Damages: Dewberry
In Dewberry Group v. Dewberry Engineers, the Supreme Court unanimously held that disgorgement of profits under the Lanham Act is limited to the named defendant’s own profits and cannot sweep in the earnings of separately incorporated affiliates unless the plaintiff pierces the corporate veil.
Patent Verdicts and the Litigation Surge
The largest patent damages award of 2025 went to medical technology company Masimo, which won a $634 million jury verdict against Apple in November 2025. The case involved patents related to light-based pulse oximetry technology used in the Apple Watch for measuring blood oxygen levels. Apple has said it will appeal, and as of mid-2026, the court has not entered final judgment while post-trial motions remain pending. The verdict was one of at least nine nine-figure patent verdicts handed down in 2025.
Patent filings hit 4,531 cases in 2025, a 22% increase over the prior year, with total damages reaching a record $4.3 billion across more than 90 cases. Non-practicing entities accounted for over 55% of all patent lawsuits and more than 90% of high-tech patent litigation. In Europe, NPE activity at the new Unified Patent Court grew by 50%.
Two factors are feeding the increase. The Patent Trial and Appeal Board has sharply curtailed its willingness to review patent challenges, dropping its institution rate to 10.3% by late 2025. With fewer administrative options to invalidate weak patents, defendants face more pressure to settle. The pending RESTORE Patent Rights Act, introduced by Senators Chris Coons and Tom Cotton, would restore a rebuttable presumption that courts should grant permanent injunctions when infringement is found. Critics say the bill would hand leverage to patent trolls; supporters argue it would help small inventors “stand toe to toe” with large companies. The bill remains in the Senate Judiciary Committee.
On patent eligibility, the Federal Circuit sided with the biotech industry in REGENXBIO v. Sarepta Therapeutics, holding that engineered host cells containing recombinant nucleic acid molecules spliced from two different species are “human-made” and patent-eligible under Section 101.
Trade Secret Rulings
On June 15, 2026, U.S. District Judge Rita Lin dismissed with prejudice a trade secret lawsuit brought by Elon Musk’s xAI against OpenAI. xAI had alleged that OpenAI stole trade secrets related to chatbots through former xAI employees. The court ruled that xAI failed to plausibly allege OpenAI knowingly obtained or used confidential information, even after amending its complaint once. The dismissal with prejudice means xAI cannot refile the case.
Two Federal Circuit rulings in May 2026 reshaped trade secret law under the Defend Trade Secrets Act. In Versata Software v. Ford Motor Company, the court vacated a trial court’s decision to zero out a jury’s trade-secret damages award and reinstated an $82.26 million breach-of-contract verdict against Ford, holding that the DTSA expressly allows unjust enrichment as a damages theory and that courts may not categorically limit recovery to a party’s licensing history. In Insulet Corp. v. EOFlow, the court overturned a $59.4 million award, ruling the claims were time-barred because the three-year statute of limitations began running when the plaintiff learned a former employee had joined the competitor and the competitor’s product bore similarities to its trade secrets.
Trademark Fights
AI is creating new trademark exposure. Multiple publishers have sued Perplexity AI for trademark infringement, alleging that the chatbot’s “hallucinations” falsely attribute fabricated content to outlets like the Wall Street Journal and New York Times. A court in the Southern District of New York denied Perplexity’s motion to dismiss, ruling that AI outputs displaying publisher trademarks can constitute “use in commerce.” A trial is set for 2026.
Other notable trademark rulings addressed whether the word “Fireball” is generic for whiskey (the Federal Circuit said no, protecting the mark), whether the “Bad Spaniels” dog toy parody of Jack Daniel’s constitutes dilution by tarnishment (a court on remand said yes), and whether NFTs qualify as “goods” under the Lanham Act (the Ninth Circuit affirmed that they do).
Pharmaceutical Serial Litigation
Brand-name pharmaceutical companies continue to use sequential patent filings to delay generic competition, a strategy known as “serial litigation.” Under the Hatch-Waxman Act, a single patent lawsuit can trigger an automatic 30-month stay of FDA approval for a generic competitor. Companies like Allergan have exploited this by filing multiple rounds of suits over continuation patents on the same drug. In the case of the eyelash-growth drug Latisse, Allergan engaged in 15 years of litigation across four separate waves despite repeated rulings invalidating its patents.
The REMEDY Act, reintroduced in the Senate in July 2025, would limit the automatic 30-month stay to a single patent per drug, forcing brand-name companies to choose their strongest patent upfront. A separate bill, the ETHIC Act, would target the practice of asserting multiple terminally disclaimed patents on the same product. Neither bill has advanced out of committee.