Jared B. Bobrow

Bobrow is co-chair of Weil’s patent litigation practice. Clients include T-Mobile US, PayPal Inc., Micron Technology Inc., Oracle Corp. and Samsung Group. For years, he has taught the patent litigation course at UC Berkeley School of Law.

For PayPal and Samsung, Bobrow won recent defense decisions at the Patent Trial and Appeal Board and at the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit.

For Oracle, he obtained a victory before the PTAB, which found that a rival’s claims directed to storage router technology were obvious and unpatentable. Oracle initiated inter partes review proceedings after Crossroads Systems Inc. sued it and others in the Western District of Texas.

“Crossroads sued a lot of companies,” Bobrow said. Defendants included Oracle, Dot Hill Systems Corp., Huawei Technologies Co. Ltd., Cisco Systems Inc., Netapp Inc. and Quantum Corp. Crossroads Systems Inc. v. Oracle Corp., A13-cv-0895 (W.D. Tex., filed Oct. 7, 2013).

“Oracle hired counsel from another firm but then decided to bring us over. I argued before the PTAB, and we prevailed there,” Bobrow said. Although Crossroads had litigated and licensed the patent extensively, the PTAB’s final written decision held the patent invalid. Oracle again asked Bobrow to serve as lead counsel on Crossroads’ appeal; he argued the matter before the Federal Circuit on March 7. On June 6, the circuit panel affirmed. Crossroads has requested en banc review on which the circuit has yet to rule. The PTAB litigation stayed the district court case; if the ruling favorable to Oracle stands, it will moot that part of the matter.

The Crossroads appeal raised a new issue that recently came before the U.S. Supreme Court. In June, the justices granted certiorari on the question of whether inter partes review, the adversarial process the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office uses to analyze existing patents’ validity, violates the Constitution by extinguishing private property rights through a non-Article III forum without a jury. Oil States Energy Services LLC. v. Greene’s Energy Group LLC, 16-712 (U.S. Sup. Ct., filed June 12, 2017).

“Crossroads decided to jump on that bandwagon,” Bobrow said. “There’s been a lot of recent activity at the PTAB, and we do a lot of work there. According to one source, Weil is one of the top participants at the board. We’re on the front lines of patent law.”

— John Roemer