Cheetah Omni LLC v. AT&T Services, Inc., et al.

In Rodriguez v. Fed. Deposit Ins. Corp., __ U.S. __, 140 S. Ct. 713, 717 (2020), the Court held that federal courts may not create their own court-made rules unless it is “necessary to protect uniquely federal interests.” THE QUESTION PRESENTED IS: Did the Federal Circuit violate Rodriguez when it invoked its own federal common law rule, superseding controlling state contract law, to hold that a patent license—one that does not expressly license a particular patent—nonetheless impliedly licenses that patent merely because it is a continuation of an expressly licensed patent, without examining whether that federal common law rule was necessary to protect uniquely federal interests?