The California Lawyers Association’s Antitrust and Unfair Competition Law hosted its inaugural In-House Counsel Summit on May 15, 2025, at the Computer History Museum in Menlo Park, California. 

The long-anticipated guidance released by the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) on June 9, 2025 (the Guidelines) reorients Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA) enforcement, shifting the DOJ’s focus to more centrally controlled, national-interest-driven anti-corruption misconduct. Below is an overview of the background and salient shifts driven by the Guidelines.

According to 35 U.S.C. § 101, “any new and useful process, machine, manufacture, or composition of matter, or any new and useful improvement thereof” may be patentable. Courts and litigants often struggle in determining what falls outside this scope—i.e., what is unpatentable subject matter. The Federal Circuit Court of Appeals dealt with this issue in a series of appeals between USAA v. PNC Bank (CAFC Nos. 2023-1639, 2023-1778, 2023-1866, 2025-1276, 2025-1277, and 2025-1341), held that the claims in the patents at issue recite unpatentable subject matter, and reversed the entries of judgment for the US$218M and US$4.3M jury verdicts that issued out of the Eastern District of Texas.