Apple Inc. v. Universal Secure Registry LLC

Opinion

Case: 20-1330 Document: 50 Page: 1 Filed: 08/27/2021

NOTE: This disposition is nonprecedential.

United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit ______________________

APPLE INC., Appellant

v.

UNIVERSAL SECURE REGISTRY LLC, Appellee ______________________

2020-1330 ______________________

Appeal from the United States Patent and Trademark Office, Patent Trial and Appeal Board in No. IPR2018- 00812. ______________________

Decided: August 27, 2021 ______________________

BRITTANY BLUEITT AMADI, Wilmer Cutler Pickering Hale and Dorr LLP, Washington, DC, argued for appellant. Also represented by KEITH T. HOWELL; MONICA GREWAL, Boston, MA; MARK D. SELWYN, Palo Alto, CA.

CHRISTOPHER MATHEWS, Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan, LLP, Los Angeles, CA, argued for appellee. Also represented by TIGRAN GULEDJIAN. ______________________ Case: 20-1330 Document: 50 Page: 2 Filed: 08/27/2021

Before NEWMAN, PROST *, and TARANTO, Circuit Judges. PER CURIAM. The patent at issue in this appeal is U.S. Patent No. 8,856,539, owned by Universal Secure Registry LLC (USR). Apple filed a petition for an inter partes review, challeng- ing several claims of the ’539 patent before the Patent Trial and Appeal Board, which instituted the requested review and eventually issued a final written decision that Apple had not shown the challenged claims to be unpatentable. In another case, we have affirmed a district court’s judg- ment that all claims of the ’539 patent are patent ineligible. Universal Secure Registry LLC v. Apple Inc., No. 20-2044 (Fed. Cir. Aug. 26, 2021). Therefore, as the parties agreed at oral argument, this appeal involving the ’539 patent is now moot. Apple Inc. v. Voip-Pal.com, Inc., 976 F.3d 1316, 1321 (Fed. Cir. 2020); Oral Arg. at 7:00–7:55, 25:00–26:40. We vacate the Board’s final written decision and remand for the Board to dismiss Apple’s petition. See Apple, 976 F.3d at 1321 (citing United States v. Munsingwear, Inc., 340 U.S. 36, 39–41 (1950)). No costs. VACATED AND REMANDED

Circuit Judge Sharon Prost vacated the position of *

Chief Judge on May 21, 2021.