The AP Stylebook advises that a compound that’s hyphenated before a noun is also hyphenated following a form of the verb "to be": The man is well-known. The woman is quick-witted. The children are soft-spoken. The play is second-rate. Based solely on AP's edict above, would we hyphenate "cutting-edge" and "state-of-the-art" after the "to be" verbs in the two examples below? I think, maybe, yes. The technology is cutting-edge. The software is state-of-the-art. Thank you.
Based on the AP guideline, yes, you would need hyphens. For the first example, I would likely use the hyphen anyway because of ambiguity; for example, consider "the cutting edge of the knife..."
