ARTICLES
July 1, 2026
Acquirers are increasingly looking at businesses whose products use AI, depend on AI, or sit close enough to AI that the buyer expects future value from data, automation, software or model-enabled workflows. The target may not be an “AI company” in the headline sense. It may be a medical-device company using machine-learning outputs in a diagnostic workflow, a software platform embedding generative AI in a user interface, a manufacturer using computer vision in quality control, a services business with proprietary datasets and automation, or a consumer brand relying on AI-created marketing assets.
June 9, 2026
Patent enforcement has always required two decisions, not one.
The first is the obvious question: can the patent owner prove infringement and survive the expected validity challenges?
The second is the question that often drives the boardroom discussion: if the case goes badly, how much additional exposure does the plaintiff face?
That second question has become harder to answer. Section 285 of the Patent Act allows a court to award reasonable attorney fees to the prevailing party in “exceptional cases.” Section 1927 can expose counsel personally when an attorney unreasonably and vexatiously multiplies proceedings. Those are serious tools. They are also easy to overstate when a defendant has just won and wants the court to treat the plaintiff’s loss as proof that the case never should have been filed.
June 3, 2026
Consumer packaged goods companies are good at measuring velocity, margin, distribution, shelf position, and repeat purchase. They are often less disciplined about measuring the intellectual property created while those numbers improve.
That gap matters. In CPG, the most valuable innovation is not always the headline product. It may be the closure that reduces leakage, the formulation tweak that stabilizes shelf life, the refill system that changes unit economics, the manufacturing step that saves twenty seconds per batch, the package geometry that makes a club-store pallet work, or the visual identity that turns a commodity into a premium item.
