On April 1, 2008, the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia struck down two new sets of regulations issued by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (PTO) that would severely restrict the number of “continuation” applications a company may file based on its original patent application. The court ruled that the rules were substantive rather than procedural in nature, and thus, lacked statutory authority for their issuance. In its brief, WLF argued that such unlawful restrictions would deprive patent applicants of substantial property rights and constitute an unconstitutional “taking” of intellectual property rights without just compensation.