Patent Law Weblog
March 26, 2020 – "China and the Changing Global Patent System" (LexisNexis IP) – 1:00 pm (ET)
April 27-28, 2020 – Paragraph IV Disputes Master Symposium (American Conference Institute) – New York, NY POSTPONED
May 20-21, 2020 – Advanced Summit on Life Sciences Patents (American Conference Institute) – New York, NY POSTPONED
You make it sound like we should be sympathetic to FB. I think that a party that’s served with a complaint that alleges infringement of potentially hundreds of patent claims deserves to know, in a timely fashion, which of those claims the plaintiff is asserting. On the other hand, I really don’t give a @#$% about FB, which has more money than it knows what to do with and more information about individuals than anyone should be allowed amass. If any defendant could have availed itself of the IPR process for hundreds of claims, it’s FB. Instead of doing so at the outset, it decided to hedge its bets and game the system. And it got what it deserved vis-a-vis joinder. Now it will have to defend against those un-joined claims in court. Big deal.
None of this is to say the plaintiff is necessarily a saint. But I don’t think the result here is a bad one for patent law (nor, apparently, does the author, so I don’t know he began with “bad cases make bad law”). Yes, FB deserved to have its motion for dismissal decided in a more timely fashion, but it also has the wherewithal to weather this temporary setback in its march for global hegemony.
LikeLike
Patent Docs 
Leave a comment