Heidi Keefe

In August 2020, Cooley convinced a panel of judges at the PTAB to protect a key patent for CoolIT, a leader in data center cooling. A three-judge panel upheld the validity of all challenged claims while adopting arguments Cooley advanced against Petitioner’s expert and his proposed prior art combination.

In May 2015, Cooley convinced a panel of judges at the PTAB to cancel claims of an online messaging patent asserted against Facebook by plaintiff EveryMD. A three-judge panel ruled that the challenged claims of the patent are invalid and also threw out EveryMD's proposed new claims finding that the plaintiff failed to prove the validity of those claims in light of prior art. In March 2016, the Federal Circuit upheld the PTAB's decision in its entirety.

Cooley defended Facebook in a patent infringement suit that targeted one of Facebook's most prominent features – the "Like" button. Rembrandt Social Media filed the case in the Eastern District of Virginia, accusing Facebook of willfully infringing two patents covering social media.

Originally, Rembrandt accused Facebook of willfully infringing two patents but we convinced the court to dismiss willful and indirect patent infringement claims early in the case. We also persuaded the judge to exclude the testimony of two Rembrandt expert witnesses, including, significantly, an expert tasked with calculating damages. As a result of this ruling, Rembrandt filed an appeal with the Federal Circuit, which was denied, and the case proceeded to trial.

In June 2014, following a five day trial, Cooley secured a complete defense verdict - the jury issued a ruling of non-infringement and also invalidated the two patents. To date, Facebook has had only two patent jury trials, both of which Cooley has resolved successfully.

When Facebook was first sued for patent infringement over eight years ago, the young company turned to Cooley.

The case was filed in the Eastern District of Pennsylvania by venture capital firm, Cross Atlantic Capital Partners (XACP) just one year after Facebook expanded its site from Harvard University to the general public. XACP claimed that its "online community" patent covered a wide variety of key Facebook features. XACP was seeking royalties, a permanent injunction against Facebook, and attorneys' fees.

Cooley guided the company through seven years of hotly contested litigation across multiple forums. Just a few weeks before trial, Facebook asked the Patent Office to invalidate the patent based on several systems and books that predated the patent, and convinced the district court to stay the case pending the Patent Office's decision.

The Patent Office initially found the claims valid. Facebook appealed to the Board of Patent Appeals (BPAI) and the BPAI judges ruled that the Examiner was wrong, and that the patent claims were invalid. XACP appealed and, in 2014, the Federal Circuit affirmed the invalidity of all claims of the patent.