Eric B. Fastiff

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Eric B. Fastiff — patent litigation summary
Based on one tracked appearance (plaintiff side, Lieff Cabraser Heimann & Bernstein) plus public firm/court records. His tracked patent docket is thin relative to his broader practice, so the patent-specific picture below rests on a small number of matters.

Focus areas. Fastiff is a San Francisco–based partner at Lieff Cabraser whose practice is primarily antitrust and complex commercial litigation; intellectual property is one component of that, and he has chaired the firm's Antitrust, Intellectual Property, and Commercial Litigation practice group. His patent-side work has clustered in information technology rather than life sciences or mechanical arts: network/database software (the Deep9 matter involved patents on updating a database over a network), display technology (electrophoretic and field-emission display patents in the CopyTele cases, plus LCD panel litigation on the antitrust side), and the data-security/encryption and mobile-payment patents asserted in Intellectual Ventures' bank campaign. His pharmaceutical work (e.g., the California Cipro pay-for-delay litigation) is antitrust, not patent prosecution or infringement. No IPR or other PTAB advocacy by him is verifiable from public records, even though the tracked IV case was stayed pending IPRs filed by the defendants and IBM; that work appears to have been handled by patent-owner counsel (Knobbe Martens) and petitioners' counsel.

Side preference and firm context. All tracked work is plaintiff side (1 plaintiff, 0 defendant), consistent with Lieff Cabraser being a plaintiffs-only firm. Within patent litigation he has acted for patent owners and patent-assertion plaintiffs — the CopyTele operating company and the NPE Deep9 — rather than defending operating companies against infringement claims.

Notable matters. In Deep9 Corp. v. Barnes & Noble (W.D. Wash.), Lieff Cabraser's first patent case, the court granted summary judgment of non-infringement on the Nook e-reader in September 2012 and the Federal Circuit affirmed without opinion in 2013 — a loss Fastiff publicly criticized as reflecting Federal Circuit hostility to NPEs (Law.com). In CopyTele, Inc. v. AU Optronics Corp. / E Ink (N.D. Cal., Judge Edward Chen), he was lead counsel on a combined contract and patent-licensing dispute; the AUO claims went to ICDR arbitration and settled in late 2014/January 2015 for $9 million cash plus transfer of CopyTele's electrophoretic-display patent portfolio, with dismissal with prejudice. In the tracked case, Intellectual Ventures II LLC v. Commerce Bancshares, Inc. (W.D. Mo.), the court stayed and then dismissed the action without prejudice pending IPRs; the asserted claims were ultimately held unpatentable or invalid, and Commerce's § 285 fee motion was denied (costs of $1,804.49 awarded). His larger, verifiable results are antitrust: the Cipro settlement ($399M), TFT-LCD settlements exceeding $470M, and the De Beers settlement ($295M).

Bar and education. Admitted in California (1996) and D.C. (1997), with U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (2007) and other circuit admissions; J.D., Cornell Law School (1995, Editor-in-Chief, Cornell International Law Journal); M.Sc. (Econ.), London School of Economics (1991); B.A., Tufts University (1990); former law clerk to Judge James T. Turner, U.S. Court of Federal Claims.