On June 1, 2020, a judge in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Texas ruled during a telephonic discovery hearing in the matter of MasterObjects, Inc. v. Facebook, Inc. that Facebook is to “physically transport code to a single location for review,” and that MasterObjects can take up to 200 pages of notes but that source code cannot be directly copied.
The patent infringement dispute began in February 2020, when MasterObjects alleged that Facebook infringed several patents related to a system that allows a computer and server to communicate asynchronously so that results are generated instantly when a search is performed. The source code protocol was incorporated into a protective order on July 7, 2020, and is just one example of the source code examination procedures recently adopted as parties work to ensure code can be reviewed safely and securely during the COVID-19 pandemic.
