A C.D. Cal. ruling on April 28, 2026 illustrates the limits of the kitchen-sink complaint: when every claim turns on the same alleged copying, the Lanham Act and common law unfair competition claims fall to copyright preemption.

The Federal Circuit’s April 17, 2026 reversal in International Medical Devices, Inc. v. Cornell applies settled California trade secret law to vacate a $17 million-plus jury verdict and a five-year permanent injunction on two independent CUTSA grounds, either of which would have sufficed.

Grammarly’s “Expert Review” feature used the names of hundreds of real writers to sell AI-generated editing advice, without obtaining consent. A class action complaint in the Southern District of New York frames the case not as a copyright dispute, but as a straightforward violation of century-old right-of-publicity laws.

A federal court in the Northern District of California has enjoined OpenAI from using the name “Cameo” for a feature on its Sora video-generation application, finding that the celebrity video marketplace Cameo is likely to succeed on its trademark infringement claim. The ruling applies established trademark doctrine to AI feature branding and rejects OpenAI’s argument that “cameo” is merely descriptive.

Britannica and Merriam-Webster sued OpenAI for copyright infringement and added a Lanham Act claim alleging that ChatGPT’s hallucinations, when attributed to their brands, constitute false designation of origin.

What happens if the copyright owner applies for copyright registration before the statute of limitations has run but the Copyright Office does not issue a certificate of registration until after the statute of limitations has run? That issue is scheduled to be argued before the United States Supreme Court on January 8, 2019.