The Federal Circuit dismissed a pro se patent appeal in Heidary v. Amazon as six months late. But a closer look at the district court docket shows the delay was much shorter, according to Patently-O.
The discrepancy stems from Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 58, which requires a judgment to be entered in a separate document. Without that separate document, the appeal clock does not start in the usual way. In this case, the absence of a Rule 58 judgment means the notice of appeal was filed 24 days after the relevant deadline, not six months.
The distinction matters because the court's dismissal was based on the longer delay. Patently-O's analysis suggests the Federal Circuit may have overlooked the missing judgment when calculating the appeal deadline.