Why East Texas Judges Just Gave Patent Holders Incentives To Sue More Companies...

from the interpretations-on-transferring-cases... dept

Earlier this year, we noted that the judges in East Texas were actually transferring some patent lawsuits out of the court, following a ruling from a year ago at the appeals court level (CAFC) telling the district courts to move cases to where they were more "convenient." For a few months, however, various patent attorneys have been saying to keep watching, and that the folks in East Texas, who know they have a good thing going, will come up with ways to keep more cases in their favorite courthouse. And... that appears to be happening. In a few recent rulings in Marshall, Texas, Judge Ward has denied attempts to move the cases to more convenient locations, sometimes challenging the question of whether or not they really were more convenient -- but the reasoning doesn't pass the sniff test.

In a case brought by a patent holder named MHL Tek, who is based in Michigan, against something around a dozen auto manufacturers, Judge Ward denied the transfer, saying that with so many different parties, it made no sense to claim that Michigan (the requested transfer site) was somehow more convenient:

"With regard to defendants, four defendants reside in Germany, three in California, two in Japan, two in South Korea, two in New Jersey, one each in Michigan, Tennessee, Alabama, Georgia, South Carolina, Indiana, and Virginia. The Court finds that this district would, in the least, be just as convenient or inconvenient to most of the defendants as the desired transferee District."

So... the plaintiff and at least one of the defendants is based in Michigan (and many of the others have offices there). None of the the parties are based in Texas. But because some of the defendants are based elsewhere, now it's suddenly ok to keep it in East Texas?

What's the likely end result? Any patent holder who wants to make sure a case remains in East Texas should make sure to sue many more companies who are distributed around the country (or the world), just to give judges in East Texas an excuse to keep the case there. That hardly seems to be living up to the spirit of what CAFC intended with its ruling...

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Some Patent Lawsuits Getting Moved Out Of East Texas

from the about-time dept

We've covered how and why many patent infringement lawsuits are filed in East Texas, but in March of last year, courts were given more leeway in transferring those cases out of East Texas to somewhere more convenient. Of course, that hasn't stopped the massive filings in East Texas, sometimes in absurd situations, such as the one where some Silicon Valley lawyers whose offices are on the same street just a few blocks away from software giant Adobe filed a patent infringement lawsuit against the company in East Texas.

However, it does look like the Federal Circuit is at least somewhat paying attention to this issue, and recently transferred a patent infringement lawsuit out of Marshall, Texas, to Ohio, after noting that Ohio was "far more convenient." Hopefully, we'll start to see more actions like this when it's abundantly clear that the only reason the lawsuit was filed in East Texas was due to jurisdiction shopping for the most favorable venue.

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