Heidi L. Keefe

Mirror Worlds Technologies LLC collected $50 million from technology titans Apple Inc. and Microsoft Corp., but Facebook Inc. would not have to cough up the cash thanks to Keefe and her team.

In the early 2000s, Mirror Worlds developed products that allowed users to organize files on a desktop computer into something called “streams.”

Then, the company asserted Keefe’s client Facebook’s news feed and timeline infringed the patented streams.

“They’re trying to fit our square peg into a round hole,” Keefe said. “Our technology didn’t match their claim. We gave them access to our technology so they can see it and how we weren’t afraid of showing [it] to them.”

In August, the case ended with an early summary judgment in favor of Facebook. Mirror Worlds Technologies LLC v. Facebook Inc., 17-CV03473 (S.D. N.Y., filed May 9, 2017).

Keefe said one of the keys to winning cases against patent holding companies is the willingness to fight the claim.

“It’s not as simple as one move and you’re done,” she said. “There are moves that have to be planned early in the case so they bear fruit at the end of the case.”

Keefe also helped secure a victory for client Amazon.com Inc. in late 2017 when internet physician directory EveryMD.com LLC alleged infringement over how users on Amazon’s website communicate messages to one another.

The point of contention was over the ability to send a message through a digital intermediary that wouldn’t reveal the sender’s email address, Keefe said.

“I can go through a middleman, they can strip off an address, put a new one on, send it to you and you kind of communicate through that middleman,” she said. “It’s not any different to the way people used to communicate through a matchmaker.”

It all boiled down to what’s known as Section 101 in patent law, which prohibits the ability to patent an idea.

“You can’t patent generic concepts,” Keefe said. “We were able to convince the court that they were trying to patent the idea of essentially protecting a user’s identity.”

— Arin Mikailian