“Patent Litigation Trends to Watch in 2026” (featured quotes)

In a forward-looking story on New Year trends in patent litigation, Marshall Gerstein Partner and patent attorney Ryan Phelan weighs in on an evolving landscape surrounding artificial intelligence and inventorship. As courts, businesses, and litigators prepare for a busy docket in 2026, Ryan highlights how AI is reshaping inventorship analysis and Section 101 eligibility considerations in patent disputes.

Patent litigators are increasingly focused on when – and to what extent – AI contributes to an invention, and how that involvement affects questions of validity and ownership. Ryan explains that deposition strategies are adapting in response, with attorneys probing more deeply into the role of the human inventor in the development process.

Ryan told Law360: “Did it come out of a computer like ChatGPT, when a problem was put in and it spit out a given invention and they patented that? Or was there something in addition added by the human to that output of the prompt?"

Subscribers to Law360 can read the full article.