Fresh From the Bench: Latest Federal Circuit Court Cases

CASE OF THE WEEK

Facebook, Inc. v. Windy City Innovations, LLC, Appeal Nos. 2018-1400 et al. (Fed. Cir. Sept. 4, 2020)‎

The only precedential decision this week was a modified panel decision of a prior precedential opinion following a petition for rehearing or rehearing en banc. The en banc court declined to take the matter.

In short, after Facebook was sued for infringement, it petitioned for IPRs. But the complaint did not specify which of the more than 800 claims of those patents were allegedly infringed. Facebook challenged some, but not all, of the claims. More than a year later, Windy City identified its infringement allegations, which included some claims that Facebook had not challenged in its IPRs. Facebook filed two new petitions for IPRs of those claims along with motions to join them to the existing IPRs. The Board granted the motion for joinder and terminated the two new IPRs. The primary issues were whether a party can later join itself to an IPR that it had previously filed, and whether a party can add new claims to an existing IPR through joinder when those claims would otherwise be time-barred. The Federal Circuit concluded, with respect to both, that it could not. We covered the original decision as our Case of the Week on March 23, 2020.

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By: Nika F. Aldrich

Edited by: Scott D. Eads and Nika Aldrich, Schwabe Williamson & Wyatt