Following years of litigation, on December 19, 2025, the Delaware Supreme Court reversed the Delaware Court of Chancery’s 2024 order rescinding a 2018 special incentive compensation award granted by Tesla, Inc. (“Tesla”) to Elon Musk (“Musk”). The grant, which was valued at approximately $56 billion at the time of issuance, is now worth over $100 billion. Brian Cromer takes a look at the case in this Stites & Harbison Client Alert.

In a recent decision by the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit, Sierra Club v. EPA, Nos. 23-3581/3583 (6th Cir. Dec. 5, 2025), the Court invoked its statutory interpretation authority to hold that the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (“EPA”) contravened the plain language of the Clean Air Act (“CAA”) by redesignating the Detroit area as in attainment with the 2015 ozone National Ambient Air Quality Standards (“NAAQS”). However, the Court deferred to EPA’s technical expertise in determining that certain air emissions could be excluded from consideration of the Detroit area’s compliance with the ozone NAAQS because of their qualification as “exceptional events” under CAA, demonstrating that Courts will continue to defer to agencies’ expertise, but will not defer to agency interpretations of their enabling statutes. Environmental attorneys Jennifer Cave and Jordan Lee take a look at the matter in this Stites & Harbison Client Alert.

For the last decade, securing patent protection for software inventions has been challenging to say the least. Claims directed to inventive and useful software-related inventions such as artificial intelligence (AI) are often invalidated or rejected as per se ineligible for patenting under 35 U.S.C. §101, the statute that identifies the four patentable categories of inventions (process, machine, article of manufacture, and composition of matter). IP Attorney Patrick Torre takes a look at those challenges in this Stites & Harbison Client Alert.

The United Kingdom Intellectual Property Office now requires UK-specific proof of trademark use and reputation. Owners of UK trademarks will recall that one result of Brexit was the automatic creation of UK trademark registrations “cloned” from EU trademark registrations in 2021. IP attorney Nancy Kennedy discusses the issues in this Stites & Harbison Client Alert.