24 Days Late, Not Six Months: The Missing Judgment in Heidary v. Amazon

by Dennis Crouch

The Federal Circuit recently dismissed the pro se appeal in Heidary v. Amazon.com Inc., No. 2026-2128 (Fed. Cir. Sept. 21, 2026) (nonprecedential, per curiam).

Judge Hurson (D. Md.) dismissed Massoud Heidary's patent infringement complaint on January 8, 2026, and Heidary's notice of appeal did not arrive until July 31. The Federal Circuit's dismissal order was simple: the 30-day deadline of 28 U.S.C. § 2107(a) for filing a notice of appeal is "mandatory and jurisdictional" with no equitable exceptions. Bowles v. Russell, 551 U.S. 205 (2007). The order follows the same pattern as Brown v. United States from earlier this year. Dennis Crouch, Day 61, Patently-O (March 23, 2026).

Notice of appeal timing is a trap for the unwary, and here a pro se plaintiff was caught.  But, I think the court skipped a step in its analysis, even though the result is probably right.  The appellate order never says when the judgment was entered or when the 30 days ran out, only that the notice "was received outside the deadline."

The trap is set by confusion over calculating a hard deadline. In particular, sometimes the deadline is 30 days from the dismissal, and other times it is 180 days, and some relief can be granted for delay, but that deadline is very tight and can only be offered by the district court, not the appellate court.

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