Trump Officials Consider Value-Based Tax on Patents

The Trump administration is reportedly weighing a dramatic overhaul of the U.S. patent system by replacing flat maintenance fees with an annual “property tax” of 1–5% on patent value, according to The Wall Street Journal. The proposal, led by Commerce Department officials, could sharply raise costs for many patent holders and would make the U.S. an outlier among major economies. While some argue that value-based fees could benefit patents with little or no worth, critics warn the change would likely come on top of existing fees, hitting industries like biotech especially hard—as reflected in recent market declines. CLICK HERE FOR FULL ARTICLE

Who Owns the Stripes? Adidas and Steve Madden Face Off in Court

Steve Madden and Adidas are facing off in a Brooklyn federal court over a design dispute that cuts to the core of fashion branding. Adidas argues that Madden’s new “Viento” and “Janos” sneakers infringe on its iconic three-stripe trademark, while Madden counters that stripes are a universal design element no one company should monopolize. The case highlights the tension between protecting brand identity and allowing creative freedom in the competitive sneaker industry. CLICK HERE FOR FULL ARTICLE

Can AI Be Trained Ethically? New Dataset Shows It’s Possible

A team of researchers has shown that it’s possible to build large AI datasets entirely from ethical sources, namely 130,000 English-language books from the Library of Congress—almost twice the size of Project Gutenberg’s collection. Their project adds to recent open-source efforts like Hugging Face’s FineWeb, which aim to make AI training more transparent and responsible. While experts say this careful approach may not be big enough to power today’s largest AI models, they hope it will encourage companies to be more open about what data they use. CLICK HERE FOR FULL ARTICLE