Heidi L. Keefe

A former astrophysicist and power intellectual property litigator representing some of Silicon Valley’s cutting-edge tech behemoths, Keefe asserted, “The smartest thing I ever do is walk into a room understanding that I’m actually the dumbest person in the room.”

Her job handling complex patent litigation, including serving as primary outside patent litigation counsel for Facebook, requires learning advanced concepts from the “best and brightest” and then explaining them to a judge or jury.

In the past year, Keefe has resolved several suits filed against Facebook by knocking out the patents in suit. In May, Keefe secured a complete win for the social networking giant against Tele-Publishing Inc., following her team’s motion for summary judgment. Tele-Publishing Inc. v. Facebook Inc., 09-CV11686 (C.D. Mass., filed Oct. 7, 2009).

Filed nearly eight years ago and producing more than 1 million pages of documents, Keefe said she was able to invalidate remaining claims with a patent law statue known as “101,” which has been redefined through recent case law to deny patents to abstract ideas implemented on a computer.

“In the first 15 years of my practice, I used 101 pretty much never,” she said. “But after the Bilski [v. Kappos] and Alice [v. CLS Bank Int’l] decisions that have come down in the last few years, it has taken on a whole new role in software cases. It’s caused a big change in the way that we approach cases at the very beginning.”

Another recent win hinged on 101. In June, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit declined to reconsider a decision to toss out a case brought by Evolutionary Intelligence against tech and media giants that included Facebook Inc., Apple Inc., Twitter Inc. and Foursquare Labs Inc. The Northern District of California decided in February to invalidate two of Evolutionary’s data management patents.

“The breadth of the type companies that they were suing showed how abstract their claims were,” making it a “natural” 101 case, said Keefe, who handled the oral argument in both courtrooms. Evolutionary Intelligence LLC v. Facebook Inc., 13-CV04202 (N.D. Cal., filed Sept. 11, 2013).

Keefe said she began learning the skill of translating “science-ese” to legalese as a college student, when she dreamed of becoming a lobbyist for the space industry. Even though that career path didn’t pan out – “I sucked at politics,” she said — one of her professors turned her onto patent law, which similarly straddles multiple disciplines.

— Lila Seidman