Latest Case: Facebook, Inc. v. Windy City Innovations, LLC (Intellectual Property)

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UF Levin College of Law professor and economist Neil H. Buchanan considers whether (and how) President Trump or his supporters in Congress could cancel the 2020 elections, citing public safety as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic. Buchanan points out that because states control the procedures for the election, Trump would need Republican governors of certain blue states to shut down their state’s elections—something Buchanan stops short of saying is likely or unlikely.

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The Lessons the Coronavirus Crisis Can Teach Us About the Religious Liberty that Serves the Public Good (aka the Framers’ Religious Liberty)

MARCI A. HAMILTON

Marci A. Hamilton, a professor at the University of Pennsylvania and one of the country’s leading church-state scholars, describes some of the lessons the novel coronavirus pandemic can teach us about religious liberty. Hamilton points out that COVID-19 is nondenominational and nonpartisan, yet we are already seeing some groups claim to be exempt from the public-health prohibitions on large gatherings, on the basis of their religious beliefs.

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Facebook, Inc. v. Windy City Innovations, LLC

Docket: 18-1400

Opinion Date: March 18, 2020

Judge: Sharon Prost

Areas of Law: Intellectual Property, Patents

Windy CIty’s patents share a common specification and are generally related to methods for communicating over a computer-based network. Exactly one year after being served with Windy City’s infringement complaint, Facebook timely petitioned for inter partes review (IPR). Windy City had not yet identified the specific claims it was asserting in the infringement proceeding. The Patent Trial and Appeal Board instituted IPR. After Windy City identified the claims it was asserting in the infringement litigation, Facebook filed two additional petitions for IPR of additional claims and motions for joinder to the already instituted IPRs. The one-year time bar of 35 U.S.C. 315(b) had passed. The Board nonetheless instituted new IPRs and granted joinder, then held that Facebook had shown by a preponderance of the evidence that some of the challenged claims, including several claims only challenged in the later-joined proceedings, are unpatentable as obvious but had failed to show that others were unpatentable. The Federal Circuit vacated in part. The Board erred in allowing Facebook to join itself to a proceeding in which it was already a party and in allowing Facebook to add new claims to the IPRs through that joinder. The court held that the obviousness determinations on the originally instituted claims are supported by substantial evidence.