Fresh From the Bench: Latest Federal Circuit Court Cases

CASE OF THE WEEK

VidStream LLC v. Twitter, Inc., Appeal No. 2019-1734, -1735 (Fed. Cir. Nov. 25, 2020)

In the Federal Circuit’s only precedential case last week, the Court addressed the extent to which a book published before the priority date but printed after the priority date qualifies as a printed publication. The Court affirmed a decision by the PTAB finding it to be prior art.

Twitter filed a petition for an IPR concerning a patent for recording and publishing content on social media websites. The patent had a priority date of May 9, 2012. In its petition for IPR, Twitter relied on a book published by Anselm Bradford that had a copyright date of 2011 and certain ISBN information. However, one page in the book stated, “Made in the USA … 13 December 2015.” VidStream argued that it did not constitute prior art because the relied-upon version of the book was not published until after the priority date.