This week in Other Barks & Bites: CAFC grants mandamus to Apple regarding Western District of Texas transfer from Austin to Waco; the Department of Justice’s Jeffrey Wilder remarks at an SEP conference that antitrust is “not the right tool” for licensees dissatisfied with SEP royalty rates; the Ninth Circuit reverses a class certification in a class antitrust action against Qualcomm’s SEP licensing practices because of an improper choice of law analysis; the Second Circuit affirms that Victor Miller was an independent contractor when writing the screenplay for Friday the 13th; the Federal Circuit clarifies its willfulness standard in reinstating a damages award against Cisco, and orders the USPTO to dismiss a petition for ex parte reexamination filed by a serial petitioner of IPRs at the PTAB; Judge Albright dismisses Google and YouTube’s arguments that VideoShare patent claims should be invalidated due to a terminal disclaimer linking the patent-in-suit to two previously invalidated patents; the Unified Patent Court is set to begin hearing EU patent cases by mid-2022 after Germany ratifies jurisdictional protocols; and Merck enters into a $11.5 billion agreement to buy Acceleron Pharma in a bid to stave off the 2028 patent cliff for Keytruda.

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