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A U.S. Patent and Trademark Office proposal to require third-party requesters for ex parte reexamination to name all real parties in interest has drawn a sharply divided response, with the dispute turning on the same transparency questions that animate the broader litigation funding disclosure debate.

As reported by IPWatchdog, 26 comments were filed before the period closed on 21 August, submitted by 17 organisations and eight individuals. The July rulemaking notice proposed that requests identify the requester and any other real parties in interest, with statements kept confidential on request, so the Office can assess whether statutory estoppel provisions bar a filing. The USPTO said it has received a significant number of reexamination requests aimed at patents already challenged in inter partes or post-grant review.

Eight of the 17 organisational comments opposed the rule outright. Supporters included Adeia, Nokia, Dolby Laboratories and the Council for Innovation Promotion. Adeia said it received ten anonymous requests between October 2025 and April 2026 after more than a decade without any, and had to defend its patents without knowing whether the requester was a licensee, competitor, affiliate of an estopped party or a foreign-backed organisation.

Dolby went further, arguing that a requester's own identification may be insufficient and proposing that requesters answer factual questions about their business model, member or subscriber funding, and the source of funds used for the challenge. Nokia recommended additional guidance covering indemnification obligations, industry consortia and third-party funding.

Opponents including the Business Software Alliance, Unified Patents and the PTAB Bar Association argued the Office has produced little evidence that estopped parties are exploiting anonymous reexamination, and warned that importing a fact-intensive real party in interest inquiry into an examiner-driven proceeding without discovery would generate satellite disputes and deter legitimate filings.

Ireland's centuries-old prohibition on third-party funding has become the practical barrier to collective redress claims against the technology companies that base their European operations there, with only one class action filed in the country in the five years since the EU opened the door to them.

As reported by POLITICO, Ireland is the only EU member state that bars a funder from financing litigation unless it has a direct or legitimate interest in the case. The restriction stems from the medieval doctrines of maintenance and champerty, written into Irish law in 1634 and still in force. England abolished both offences in 1967; Ireland's courts have continued to uphold the ban, with narrow exceptions such as charitable donations made without expectation of a share of any award.

The prohibition collides directly with the EU's 2020 Representative Actions Directive, which permits only non-profit qualified entities to bring class actions. Those organisations typically depend on outside capital to fund proceedings against well-resourced defendants. Five non-profits are registered in Ireland to bring such claims, but only one case has been lodged — the Irish Council for Civil Liberties' challenge to Microsoft's online advertising system, financed from the organisation's general budget.

Johnny Ryan, who directs the ICCL's enforcement unit, said complex litigation in Ireland costs at least €1 million at first instance and that the organisation "cannot take multiple cases unless the State allows us to raise the necessary funds." He described the combination of the EU's non-profit requirement and Ireland's funding ban as a "fatal contradiction" for consumers seeking compensation.

Ireland's Law Reform Commission is due to publish a report later this year on whether the rules should change, though Justice Minister Jim O'Callaghan has said he is "very hesitant" about permitting third-party funding. The European Commission said it is assessing implementation of the directive and that member states banning funding must ensure costs do not obstruct qualified entities.

Administrators to collapsed litigation funder Woodville Consultants Limited are investigating allegations that the company used money raised from new investors to pay promised returns to earlier ones, and have told investors that no reliable estimate can yet be placed on the value of the company's litigation funding portfolio.

As reported by The Law Society Gazette, the disclosure comes in Kroll's third update to investors since the Pontypridd-based business entered administration on 16 July by order of the High Court. Woodville focused on funding car finance redress claims and is understood to have raised more than £390 million from investors through unregulated loan notes.

Kroll reported that the funding arrangements have proved "more complex than initially understood," with some involving multiple parties, intermediary structures, overlapping contractual documents and inconsistent records of how money moved and on what basis it might be recovered. The administrators have met two law firms and remain in dialogue with others as they assess next steps, while also weighing how the Financial Conduct Authority's own motor finance redress scheme — designed to bypass claims brought by lawyers — could affect the timing and value of any recoveries.

The report also removes a source of comfort for investors. Performance bonds issued by Ohio-based insurer Talisman, which the administrators reviewed, do not cover amounts Woodville owes to investors. Kroll noted that some investors "were led to believe these bonds were a full insurance protection for their capital."

Separately, the administrators are reviewing Kairos Litigation, a venture established earlier this year by Woodville directors Ann Marie Bell and Peter Legge that sought to raise money through a tokenised loan note programme, as well as allegations concerning the possible mis-selling of insurance guarantees and a crypto-investment opportunity offered shortly before the collapse. No conclusions have been reached, and the administrators say it remains too early to draw reliable conclusions about recoveries.

The Unified Patent Court has ordered a newly formed patent claimant to post €200,000 in security for costs after concluding that the entity was economically assetless because its patents, licences and future income had all been pledged to its litigation funder.

As reported by Mishcon de Reya, the Hamburg Local Division reached that finding in *Nixu v Infoblox* (UPC_CFI_360/2026). Nixu, a US-domiciled claimant, was incorporated in March 2025 and acquired the patent in suit weeks later. The court declined to treat US domicile as a ground for security in itself, holding that "a claimant's domicile in the US did not, in itself, justify security for costs" and noting that US courts recognise European judgments.

What did justify security was the claimant's financial structure. Under a Patent Security Agreement, all patents, licences and future income were pledged to the funder, and part of the purchase price remained unpaid. The court found Nixu was "basically assetless in an economical sense" and dependent on discretionary support from its funder.

The same update reports a second security decision. In *La Siddhi v Athena Pharmaceutiques* (UPC_CoA_48/2026), the Court of Appeal upheld a €75,000 order against an SME claimant, confirming that "a party's SME status does not, by itself, exempt that party from the obligation to provide security for costs." The court distinguished fee reductions and cost ceilings available to SMEs from the security regime under Article 69(4) UPCA and Rule 158, which contains no SME carve-out. Security was set at roughly 60% of the applicable €112,000 recoverable costs ceiling.

Together the decisions suggest the UPC will look through corporate form to the funding arrangement itself when assessing whether a claimant can meet an adverse costs award.

Insurance rating agency Demotech has called for a structural change to the way property and casualty insurers report loss costs, arguing that the current composite format masks the effect of technology-driven claim generation that is sometimes financed by third-party litigation funders.

As reported by PR Newswire, Joseph L. Petrelli, president and co-founder of Demotech, said the firm's 2022 review of failed carriers pointed to litigation as the decisive factor. "In 2022, our postmortem of failed carriers identified new, annual litigation as the proximate cause of what destroyed them," Petrelli said.

The argument turns on an assumption built into loss cost reporting decades ago. Petrelli noted that until the mid-1980s advisory organisations published rates and premiums for insurers to adopt or deviate from, and that "an implicit assumption underlying the original loss cost format was that an equilibrium existed in the relative claim frequency between claims reported and settled with policyholders, and claims litigated and negotiated with plaintiff firms."

Demotech's position is that the equilibrium no longer holds. Its research concluded that industrial-scale increases in litigated claims were achieved through technology, online marketing and advertising, "sometimes financed through third-party litigation funding." Petrelli also pointed to alternative business structures, managed services organisations and what he described as other mutations in the legal profession that "may circumvent the disclosure of third-party litigation funding."

The proposed remedy is to trifurcate loss cost data, disaggregating a single composite figure into claims closed without payment, litigated claims and non-litigated claims, each weighted by its own frequency. Demotech contends that the added granularity would allow insurers and regulators to price the litigated portion of a book directly rather than absorbing it into a blended average.

A new annual study of large jury awards has recorded the steepest year of nuclear verdict activity since 2009, and it places the erosion of tort reform — including rules governing third-party litigation funding — among the forces driving the increase.

As reported by Insurance Journal, the latest edition of Marathon Strategies' *Corporate Verdicts Go Thermonuclear* report counted nearly 200 verdicts of $10 million or more against corporate defendants in 2025, a 40.7% rise over 2024 and the highest total in sixteen years. Those awards totalled $25.6 billion. Forty of them cleared $100 million, the threshold Marathon uses for a "thermonuclear" verdict, and four exceeded $1 billion.

The spread across the economy widened as well. The report identified nuclear verdicts in 68 industries, up from 55 the previous year and 48 the year before that. Product liability accounted for 29 verdicts worth roughly $12 billion, while the insurance sector recorded five verdicts totalling $390 million. Texas, California, Florida and Maryland saw the heaviest activity.

Marathon attributes the trend to a combination of factors, stating that its research "identified corporate mistrust, social pessimism, erosion of tort reform, and public desensitization to large numbers as among the most important."

The reference to tort reform is notable given the pace of state-level legislative activity. Eight states — Arkansas, Georgia, Kansas, Louisiana, Missouri, Montana, Oklahoma and South Carolina — enacted tort reform measures in 2025, and those packages included both damages caps and expanded disclosure obligations for third-party litigation funders.

The findings are likely to be cited on both sides of the funding debate, with defence-side advocates pointing to verdict growth as evidence that disclosure rules are needed, and funders noting that the report identifies broader social and economic drivers rather than isolating litigation finance as the cause.

The seven celebrity claimants in the failed privacy action against the Daily Mail have been ordered to pay costs on the indemnity basis and to make a payment on account of £9.54m by 28 August, crystallising a gap between their after-the-event insurance cover and the publisher's claimed costs.

As reported by the Law Society Gazette, Mr Justice Nicklin found that the case went "well outside the norm" and that its "conduct was unreasonable to a high degree." The judge described the action as "litigation conceived and pleaded on an unjustifiably wide canvas," which was "speculative at origin and depended substantially on inference," with serious allegations maintained over a prolonged period on an inadequate evidential foundation.

The claims of unlawful information-gathering, brought by claimants including the Duke of Sussex, Baroness Lawrence and Sir Elton John, were dismissed last month following an 11-week trial. Associated Newspapers had exceeded its approved budget by more than £18.6m, with total costs amounting to what claimant lawyers called an "eye-watering" £34,481,622.54. The claimants hold legal expenses insurance covering £16.2m.

Nicklin J declined to impose a cap on recoverable costs, though he described the publisher's costs as "striking." The payment on account was set at £9,544,355, close to the £9,950,624.37 sought by Associated, which represented 65% of incurred pre-budgeted costs and 90% of budgeted costs.

The order converts a previously theoretical insurance shortfall into an immediate obligation, and stands as a reminder of how far ATE limits can fall short of defendants' actual costs in heavily contested, long-running litigation.