Posts Tagged: "Eastern District of Texas"

On Wednesday, August 15th, the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit issued a precedential decision in BSG Tech LLC v. BuySeasons, Inc. which upheld a decision by the district court to invalidate patent claims owned by BSG Tech as patent-ineligible under 35 U.S.C. § 101. The Federal Circuit panel of Circuit Judges Jimmie Reyna, Evan Wallach and Todd Hughes found that the district court correctly determined that patent claim asserted by BSG Tech were invalid as abstract ideas lacking any inventive step under the Alice/Mayo framework… The only allegedly unconventional feature of BSG Tech’s claims was the requirement that users are guided by summary comparison usage information, which was simply a restatement of the abstract idea identified under the first step of Alice/Mayo

The recent Tinnus opinion further defines the meaning of “regular and established place of business.” See Tinnus Enters. v. Telebrands Corp., Case No. 6:17-CV-00170-RWS (E.D. Tex. May 1, 2018). The opinion provides additional guidance to practitioners defining “residence” under TC Heartland, Micron, and Cray: teleworking employees are not enough, but leased retail space in brick-and-mortar stores might be.

Of the many lingering issues left in TC Heartland’s wake for domestic corporations, a Federal Circuit panel resolved several of them recently. In In re ZTE (USA), No. 2018-113, the court addressed two of the most common issues dogging appeals over the application of § 1400(b): whose law governs burden, and where does that burden lie. In In re Bigcommerce, No. 2018-120, the court addressed the territorial bounds mapped by the phrase “judicial district” in § 1400(b). Judge Linn authored both. 

In patent infringement suits brought against a corporate defendant in a state with multiple judicial districts, venue is only proper in the single district where the defendant maintains a principal place of business. If the principal place of business is not in the state of incorporation, venue is proper in the single judicial district where the office registered in its corporate filings is located.

After the case was filed in the Eastern District of Texas, ZTE filed a motion to transfer the case to the Northern District of Texas under 28 U.S.C. § 1404(a) and filed a motion to dismiss for improper venue under 28 U.S.C. § 1406 and § 1400(b). The district court ruled that the Eastern District of Texas was a proper venue. Relying on Fifth Circuit law, the district court denied ZTE’s motion to dismiss, finding that ZTE “failed to meet its burden to show that it does not have a regular and established place of business in the District.” ZTE filed a petition for a writ of mandamus alleging that the district court improperly placed the burden of proof on the defendant.

Texas-based patent owner PACid Technologies filed a complaint alleging patent infringement committed by South Korean consumer electronics giant Samsung (KRX:005930). The case, filed in the Eastern District of Texas, focuses on authentication protocols utilized by Samsung devices which allegedly infringe upon a pair of patents owned by PACid.

Portal Communications filed a suit for patent infringement against Cupertino, CA-based consumer tech giant Apple Inc. At issue in the case, which was filed in the Eastern District of Texas, are a series of patents covering natural language voice query technologies which are allegedly in use by Apple’s Siri digital personal assistant.

Google also argued that, if claim preclusion did not bar SimpleAir’s infringement claims, than the Kessler doctrine barred them. This doctrine, stemming from a 1907 decision by the U.S. Supreme Court in Kessler v. Eldred, has been used to protect a party’s rights to continue a practice accused of infringement if an earlier judgment found that essentially the same activity did not infringe the patent. While the Federal Circuit has relied on the Kesler doctrine to bar patent assertion against similar activities or products found not to infringe, the doctrine has not been applied to bar a broader set of rights than would have been barred by claim preclusion.

This study uncovered several shocking revelations. First, 12.64% of PTAB judges were appointed with less than 5 years of experience prior to their appointment as APJs (i.e., 5 years or less removed from graduating from law school), while some PTAB judges were appointed with as little as 2 years of experience. Indeed, 7.47% of APJs had 4 or less years of experience when they were appointed to the PTAB… There were zero federal district court judges appointed with 10 years or less experience, while 46.55% of PTAB judges were appointed with 10 years or less experience… This would mean that 46.55% of PTAB judges were appointed while they were still at best senior associates. Worse, 4.60% of PTAB judges were appointed with 3 or fewer years of experience, which means those 4.60% of PTAB judges were appointed at a time when they were only at a junior associate level.

Barcode reading solutions provider Code Corporation of Salt Lake City, UT, announced that it had filed antitrust actions against engineering conglomerate Honeywell International (NYSE:HON) at both the U.S. International Trade Commission and in the Eastern District of Texas. Code, which is seeking an injunction on the importation and sale of barcode readers marketed by Honeywell for the healthcare industry, alleges that Honeywell engaged in a campaign to mislead distributors about the legitimacy of Code’s barcode reader products as part of an effort to monopolize that market.

On November 21st, a jury verdict entered in the Eastern District of Texas awarded $12.3 million in damages to Tinnus Enterprises and ZURU Ltd. in a patent infringement case against major U.S. telemarketing firms Telebrands and its subsidiary Bulbhead.com. The verdict, which also carries a finding of willful infringement of the patents-in-suit, further upheld the validity of patents owned by Tinnus in stark contrast to findings which have issued by the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) on those patents.

A jury verdict recently entered in a patent infringement case in the Eastern District of Texas held that plaintiff Packet Intelligence, a patent owning entity headquartered in Marshall, TX, did not prove infringement of claims from three patents asserted against Canadian communications service solutions provider Sandvine Corporation (TSE:SVC). The jury verdict comes less than one month after Packet Intelligence won a jury verdict of infringement on the same asserted patents in a different Eastern Texas case filed against Westford, MA-based application and network performance management firm NetScout Systems (NASDAQ:NTCT).

Arguing against Micron’s motion to dismiss, Harvard contended that TC Heartland only affirmed a previous precedent set by SCOTUS and that the improper venue challenge was available to Micron back when it filed its first motion in August 2016… The Federal Circuit concluded that the TC Heartland decision “changed controlling law in the relevant sense” and thus the Supreme Court’s interpretation of the patent venue statute was not available to Micron at the time of its August 2016 motion to dismiss.concluded that the TC Heartland decision “changed controlling law in the relevant sense” and thus the Supreme Court’s interpretation of the patent venue statute was not available to Micron at the time of its August 2016 motion to dismiss.

Judge William C. Bryson of the United States Federal District Court for the Eastern District of Texas found that Allergan’s RESTASIS® patents were infringed by Teva Pharmaceuticals USA, but that Teva had demonstrated invalidity of those patents by clear and convincing evidence… In a separate Order dealing with the issue of whether the Saint Regis Mohawk Tribe should be joined as co-plaintiff, Judge Bryson acknowledged that “the sovereign immunity issue is not presented in this case,” but nevertheless went to great lengths in dicta to express his opinion on the matter anyway.

On May 22, 2017, in TC Heartland LLC v. Kraft Foods Group Brands, LLC, 137 S.Ct. 1514 (2017), the Supreme Court held that patent venue is controlled exclusively by 28 U.S.C. § 1400(b), which restricts venue in patent cases to (1) where the Defendant resides, or (2) where the Defendant commits an act of infringement and has a regular and established place of business. The decision was immediately hailed by commentators as a significant break with past precedent… Despite the common perception of practitioners that the TC Heartland decision changed the law of venue in patent cases, the majority of district courts to address this issue have come to the opposite conclusion, finding that the decision merely reaffirmed existing law and could not excuse the failure to raise the defense earlier. The reasoning of these decisions is questionable, as is the refusal of these courts to recognize how dramatically TC Heartland changed the landscape for patent litigation.