Robert Hulse

Hulse prosecuted the now mighty Facebook's very first patent involving a news feed feature.

"I've been working with Facebook since 2007," he said. "We've really done a lot to shape the portfolio. It was very small when I got involved, but we've been building it up."

Hulse served as Facebook's sole outside patent counsel for a long time, he said, and continues to do the bulk of the work.

"Over the years, you get to know the technology as you grow up with them," he said.

Among his significant matters, Hulse successfully appealed a rejected patent application to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit on behalf of Apple Inc. In re: Staats, 2010-1443 (Fed. Cir. March 5, 2012).

He was asked to work on a reissue patent application, Hulse said.

"The patent office was refusing to follow Federal Circuit case law that was directly on point," Hulse said, "and they refused to follow what was pretty clear guidance in their own rule book."

The legal issues involved, he said, would impact the validity of patent holders from broadening their patents through the reissue process.

After an unsuccessful appeal to the patent office, he convinced Apple to let him take the matter to the Federal Circuit and, on March 5, Hulse won his appeal.

"Had it stood, it would have killed a lot of patents across the country," he said, "and would have prevented many others from being issued."

Hulse also devotes a measure of his practice to working with startups. He noted that most patents are never litigated, but are used in the valuation for an acquisition or an investment.

"I get to see the business side of the patents," he said. "I tell clients, 'You don't patent something because of the technical merit of the idea. The decision to patent an idea turns on whether the ability to exclude others from using your idea is worth the investment."

- PAT BRODERICK

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