Intellectual Property Tracker
Patents and copyright are federal. The fights your clients are in are not
A curated tracker for the intellectual property questions states actually legislate: digital likeness, publicity rights and talent mobility.
Bills in Scope
Jurisdictions
Past Committee
The Problem
A State IP Practice Is Not A Patent Practice
It is publicity rights, restrictive covenants and the ownership of a voice or a face, and those are moving faster right now than anything in Title 35.
Digital replica bills hide in plain sight
A statute giving a performer control over a synthetic version of their voice is an IP bill, an AI bill and a labour bill at once. Tracking by committee or by title loses it at least twice.
Non-compete reform moves trade secret risk
When a state narrows or bans restrictive covenants, the protection your client relied on quietly shifts into trade secret law. That change arrives in an employment bill, not an IP one.
The federal frame makes state filings easy to dismiss
Because the headline IP regimes are federal, state activity gets treated as noise. It is not. It is where enforceable rights over a person's likeness and a departing employee's knowledge are being written.
What's In Scope
Defined in writing, measured against every bill
In scope are the rights states genuinely own: digital replicas and the right of publicity, name, image and likeness including student athletes, restrictive covenants and talent mobility, and the treatment of training data and synthetic performances where a state creates a right rather than describing a federal one.
What this tracker does not cover
Patents and copyright are federal and are outside this tracker by construction rather than by omission. The whole corpus holds two patent bills and five copyright bills, which is the measurement that set this scope. Regulatory Watch is Federal Register only, permanently.
Scope is defined by a written topic profile that every bill is measured against. The profiles are drafted by a model and validated by retrieval measurement against a judged set of bills, not reviewed by an attorney. LawSignals is a research tool and does not provide legal advice.
Live From The Tracker
What's at the top of the Intellectual Property feed
The real feed, ranked the way a subscriber sees it: how far a bill has moved first, then how recently. Nothing here is a sample.
Matched through 6 October 2026
62Enacted
3Cleared both chambers
69Past committee
6Active in committee
210Introduced or inactive
350 bills in scope
Enacted
25 of 62 shown
Showing the 25 furthest along of 350. Sign up to see the full list →
The Monthly Issue
The document you forward to a client
Read a full issue before you decide anything. It was generated from the corpus, so every bill in it is real and you can check one.
Read the August 2026 issueA real generated document, not a mockup.
The month in one paragraph
What actually happened, written rather than counted.
What moved
Every bill that advanced, grouped by how far, one line each.
Enacted
What became law, and the effective date where the text states one.
Regulatory Watch
Federal rulemaking on the same subject, led by comment deadlines.
By Jurisdiction
Intellectual Property legislation, state by state
51 jurisdictions currently hold bills in this tracker
- New Jersey26
- New York25
- Texas20
- Missouri16
- Massachusetts15
- Oklahoma14
- Virginia14
- Mississippi12
- Hawaii11
- Maryland10
- California9
- Florida9
- Kentucky9
- Connecticut8
- Georgia8
- Louisiana8
- Arizona7
- Michigan7
- Congress7
- Alabama6
- Iowa6
- Montana6
- South Carolina6
- Kansas5
- New Hampshire5
- New Mexico5
- Ohio5
- Tennessee5
- Utah5
- Vermont5
- Washington5
- Colorado4
- Indiana4
- North Carolina4
- Rhode Island4
- Wisconsin4
- Alaska3
- Arkansas3
- Illinois3
- Oregon3
- Pennsylvania3
- Maine2
- North Dakota2
- Nebraska2
- Nevada2
- South Dakota2
- West Virginia2
- Idaho1
- Minnesota1
- Puerto Rico1
- Wyoming1
Track Intellectual Property in your dashboard
One tracker is the entry plan. Every plan starts with a free trial, and the trial includes a real issue rather than a sample of one.
Frequently Asked Questions
Why does this tracker not cover patents or copyright?
Both are federal, so states barely legislate them. Measured against the corpus, the entire set of state bills holds two patent bills and five copyright bills. The scope is set to what states actually create rights over: publicity, likeness and talent mobility. Trade secret law is on the same measured footing and is not tracked as a topic of its own: the whole corpus holds 45 bills that mention one. It reaches the tracker through restrictive covenants, which is the FAQ below.
Does it overlap with the AI tracker?
Deliberately. A digital replica bill belongs to both, and no exclusion is added to force them apart. If you follow both, you will see that bill in both feeds.
Are non-compete bills really IP?
For this purpose, yes. When a state narrows or bans restrictive covenants, the protection a client relied on shifts into trade secret law, so the bill changes IP exposure even though it is filed as employment legislation.
Who decides what is relevant?
A written topic profile, drafted by a model and validated by retrieval measurement against a judged set of bills. It is not reviewed by an attorney.
LawSignals is a research tool. It does not provide legal advice. Always consult qualified legal counsel.