It was an all-Texas affair at the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit on Tuesday as lawyers from Vinson & Elkins, Baker Botts and Skiermont Derby hashed out a patent dispute that poses novel issues of sovereign immunity.

Skiermont Derby's Paul Skiermont argued to the D.C.-based appellate court that the University of Texas had unfairly granted his client, Gensetix Inc., the right to license a cancer treatment developed at the university, but then refused to join in a suit against alleged infringers at the Baylor College of Medicine.

When a patent is jointly owned, both owners must participate for the lawsuit to go forward. The Supreme Court has said that a patent holder can be involuntarily joined to a lawsuit if there's no other way of securing justice for a licensee. But U.S. District Judge Andrew Hanen of Houston ruled that UT's sovereign immunity trumped that principle and dismissed the case.