Honestly, if you missed the IPO Annual Meeting 2025 in San Diego this past September, you missed more than just a few days of sun at the Manchester Grand Hyatt. It wasn't just another corporate legal junket. While everyone else was obsessing over the beach or the Gaslamp Quarter, the real action was happening inside those air-conditioned ballrooms where the future of how we own—and protect—ideas was basically being rewritten.
You've probably heard the buzz about AI. Everyone has. But at this year’s Intellectual Property Owners Association (IPO) gathering, the conversation moved past the "is AI going to take my job?" hand-wringing. Instead, it hit a much more tactical, and frankly, more stressful reality for patent and trademark owners.
The AI Trade Secret Panic is Real
One of the heaviest sessions focused on something most people aren't even thinking about yet: AI-generated trade secrets. Gregory Bombard from Greenberg Traurig led a panel that basically laid out a nightmare scenario for companies. If an AI "invents" a more efficient manufacturing process, who owns that secret? Can it even be a trade secret if a human didn't think of it?
The room was packed.
People were scribbling notes like crazy because the legal frameworks are lagging so far behind the tech. We're talking about a landscape where the USPTO—represented by Acting Director Coke Stewart at the event—is trying to navigate these murky waters while the EU AI Act and various U.S. Executive Orders are throwing new rules at practitioners every other week.
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What Really Happened with the USPTO Fee Changes
You might think fee increases are boring. You’d be wrong.
Jennifer Fraser and Steve Zeller from Dykema broke down the 2025 USPTO Trademark Changes, and let me tell you, the mood was tense. It’s not just about paying more; it’s about the "Goods & Services ID Manual" optimization. Basically, if you aren't hyper-precise with your filings now, you're going to get hit with surcharges that add up fast. It's a move toward "e-filing system mastery," which is just a fancy way of saying the USPTO is tired of messy data and they're making you pay for it.
The Lashify Bombshell and the ITC
There was a lot of talk about a specific court case: Lashify v. ITC.
Roger Denning from Fish & Richardson explained why this March 2025 opinion changed everything for Section 337 investigations. For years, the International Trade Commission (ITC) had a pretty set-in-stone "domestic industry requirement." The Federal Circuit basically upended that.
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Now, the scope of what counts as "investment" in the U.S. to get ITC protection is much broader. This is a massive win for certain types of companies, but it also means the ITC is about to get way more crowded. If you’re a defendant in a patent case, your life just got a lot more complicated.
Why San Diego Felt Different
The IPO Annual Meeting 2025 also had this weirdly specific focus on "California Dreaming" (literally, that was the beach party theme). But underneath the networking and the "Fun Run" at 6:00 a.m.—which, who actually does that?—there was a sense of urgency.
We saw a lot of focus on:
- Graphical User Interfaces (GUIs): Tracy Durkin from Sterne Kessler talked about how we’re moving beyond screens into AR and VR, and how the patent offices in Europe and Asia are actually moving faster than the U.S. on this.
- Third-Party Litigation Funding: It's no longer a niche thing. It's becoming a standard part of the litigation ecosystem, and the sessions on navigating its ethics were standing-room only.
- Global Harmonization: WIPO Director General Daren Tang made a big appearance. His message? We can't have 190 different sets of rules for AI. We need a global baseline, or the whole system falls apart.
Practical Steps for IP Owners Right Now
If you didn't make it to the Manchester Grand Hyatt, you need to play catch-up. The world didn't stop while you were in your office.
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First, audit your trade secret protocols. If your R&D team is using generative AI to optimize formulas or code, you need specific "AI Trade Secret" language in your contracts today. Don't wait for a court to tell you that your most valuable asset is now public domain because you didn't have a human "inventor."
Second, look at your trademark budget for the rest of 2025 and 2026. The fee structures have shifted. You need to optimize your ID Manual selections to avoid those new surcharges. It sounds small, but across a global portfolio, we're talking about tens of thousands of dollars in "lazy filing" penalties.
Finally, keep an eye on the ITC. With the Lashify ruling, more competitors might try to use the ITC as a weapon against you. Check if your current U.S. operations—even if they're just design or testing—now meet that newly expanded domestic industry requirement. You might have more leverage than you think.
The next big one is in Toronto in 2026. Start planning your travel now, because if 2025 taught us anything, it's that the "old ways" of managing IP are officially dead.
Actionable Next Steps
- Review AI usage policies: Ensure your internal teams are documenting the human "spark" in any AI-assisted invention to protect patentability and trade secret status.
- Update trademark filing workflows: Train your paralegals or outside counsel on the specific 2025 USPTO fee triggers to avoid unnecessary costs.
- Assess ITC eligibility: If you're a smaller firm with limited U.S. manufacturing, re-read the Lashify decision. You might now qualify for ITC protection that was previously out of reach.
- Monitor the EU AI Act: Even if you're U.S.-based, if your IP touches European markets, the compliance deadlines are approaching faster than most legal departments realize.