Heidi Keefe

Although Heidi L. Keefe trained as an astrophysicist with the goal of being a lobbyist for the space program, she now sees herself as a teacher, like her mother. "I've always been in awe of what she does and how naturally she does it," she said about her mother.

In fact, Keefe became a patent litigator, and she sees her job as teaching juries and judges. "And, of course, if I teach them the right way, they're going to come out in my client's favor."

That's what happened just before Christmas in 2021 when she persuaded Judge Alan Albright -- for the first time in the West Texas judge's career -- to invalidate a patent as ineligible under Section 101.

She was defending Facebook against an accusation that it infringed a patent for determining the intent of a website visitor. At the beginning of Keefe's argument for summary judgment, the judge told her she was "swimming up a creek without a paddle" because he preferred sending patentability questions to juries. "And then, over the course of the next 20 to 30 minutes, I brought him around."

She did that by taking Albright through the plaintiff's expert's evidence to "explain why that evidence was not evidence at all, that in fact, it was just the expert saying, 'because I say so,'" Keefe said.

Albright's decision was upheld on appeal in August. USC IP Partnership L.P. v. Facebook Inc., 22-1397 (Fed. Circ., dec'd. Aug. 30, 2023).

Now, she also teaches younger patent lawyers how to be teachers themselves. That means that rather than simply handing back a brief with a few scribbled notes about how to rewrite it, Keefe spends "an extra hour or two of my time to explain the why of why I want something changed," she said.

Her approach paid off when younger partner Phillip Morton "essentially stepped out of [her] shadow" to craft the way another case for Facebook should proceed. Following several favorable decisions at the PTAB, the case settled in late January, just a month ahead of the trial date. Immersion Corp. v. Meta Platforms Inc., 1:23-cv-00623 (W.D. Tex., filed May 26, 2022).

"He is the one that the client goes to for day-to-day stuff," she said about Morton. It's exciting when the client "sees the genius and brilliance in your partner that you see."

Besides Meta and Facebook, Keefe's other clients include Google and Zipline. "I'm excited by everybody that I get to represent," she said. "We're doing a good job of keeping them able to keep us using the cool new technology that they develop on a daily basis."

-- Don DeBenedictis