Over the past two decades, US firm value flipped from mostly tangible to over 90% intangible — and the rulebook for defending those intangibles quietly rewrote itself underneath everyone. A recent Cornerstone Research study, Intellectual Property Litigation: U.S. Trends in Global Perspective (June 2026), maps where enforcement has actually gone, and the headline for anyone running an IP portfolio is simple: demand for protection never fell, but the venues, the remedies, and even the type of right you reach for have shifted. US injunctions became scarce after eBay and now favour product companies that can show market harm. Disputes “exported” abroad — Germany and the new Unified Patent Court for fast injunctions, the UK for global licensing rates, China for coordination. Firms increasingly chose secrecy over disclosure, with trade secret litigation surging from 2022 to 2025. The patent didn’t weaken; the strategic calculation around it got more complex.

The practical lesson is that IP strategy is more than ever a portfolio-and-venue decision, not a just filing decision. Three moves follow directly.

First, match the right to the remedy you actually need — if your real goal is to stop a competitor, know that a US damages award and a German injunction are different instruments, and build the campaign around the one that changes behaviour.

Second, treat trade secrets as a deliberate choice, not a default — for AI model weights, datasets, and manufacturing know-how, secrecy can outperform a patent, but only if your access controls and contracts are genuinely in place before a dispute, not assembled after one.

Third, decide the enforcement question before you’re forced to — the report’s picture of multi-forum campaigns is a reminder that reactive litigation is the expensive way to learn this; the discipline of asking “do we have a good case, and if not, how do we resolve this sensibly?” applies long before you pick a court.

The organisations that win here aren’t the ones with the most patents — they’re the ones who decided, in advance, which right to assert, where, and to what end.