Heidi L. Keefe

A quote on Heidi L. Keefe’s page at Cooley LLP’s site sums her up: “I like to win.” A former astrophysicist and current first-chair trial lawyer, she serves on her firm’s 10-person board of directors while representing top names in the tech world.

Among her clients: Facebook, Inc., Olo Corp., Apple Inc., Niantic, Inc., Snap Inc., Quorum Analytics, Inc., Varian Medical Systems, Inc., Rubrik, Inc. and Lululemon Athletica Inc.

In early March 2022, Keefe scored a satisfying victory for Facebook on patent claims by Yale University inventor David Gelernter’s systems and methods for presenting data in time-ordered streams on a computer system. Both Apple Inc. and Microsoft Corp. had settled cases involving the same plaintiff and claims.

“They apparently expected that Facebook would make a similar deal, but no, we fought,” Keefe said. She originally won the case on a motion for summary judgment of non-infringement before a federal judge in the Southern District of New York, only to be reversed by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, which held that the motion came too early in the case.

“So we went back down and finished discovery and filed our summary judgment motion again. And three days after the hearing the judge granted it again,” Keefe said, adding that she expects another appeal. Mirror Worlds Technologies v. Facebook Inc., 1:17-cv-03473 (S.D. N.Y., filed May 9, 2017).

Another remarkable win came in Texas in December 2021 in an infringement case targeting Facebook’s use of a research company’s asserted patent on navigating websites. At a hearing just a week before trial was set to begin, Keefe persuaded U.S. District Judge Alan D. Albright of Waco to grant summary judgment and invalidate all the plaintiff’s 17 claims. USC IP Partnership LP v. Facebook Inc., 6:20-cv-00555 (W.D. Texas, filed June 22. 2020).

Albright, who hears a large percentage of the patent litigation cases in the U.S., told Keefe that he was inclined to send the case to trial and that although he was willing to listen, she’d be “swimming a little bit up river” in trying to get him to change his mind, according to a transcript of the hearing. Even so, she proceeded to argue that the plaintiff’s expert had submitted a report that included only conclusions and no facts, leaving no issues in contention for a jury to consider.

The judge took a brief recess, then announced he’d grant Keefe’s motion for summary judgment. “I looked at the client, like, ‘Did that just happen?’ It was a pleasant surprise,” Keefe said.

– John Roemer