Posts Tagged: "Eastern Texas"

Legal data analytics provider Lex Machina recently published a post featuring data points regarding the filing of patent infringement cases in the year following the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in TC Heartland v. Kraft Foods Group Brands. In that decision, the Court held that the patent venue statute (28 U.S.C. § 1400(b)) meant that domestic companies could only file patent infringement suits in the judicial district where they were incorporated. Lex Machina’s one-year data update shows that TC Heartland has toppled the Eastern District of Texas as the top forum for patent infringement filings among U.S. district courts. The decision has also affected the filing behaviors of high-volume plaintiffs (HVPs), or those entities filing 10 or more patent infringement cases in U.S. district courts within one calendar year.

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.

Although patent litigation levels through the first nine months of 2017 have largely remained consistent with patterns from recent years, it does appear that the number of patent suits filed in U.S. district courts has been on a slow decline in recent years. There were a total of 995 patent lawsuits filed in district court during 2017’s third quarter, an 8.4 percent decline when compared to totals from 2016’s third quarter. Year-over-year declines in patent suit filing were also seen in the first and second quarters of 2016 as well. As Lex Machina data scientist Brian Howard notes, 2017 continued a trend in which patent suit filings tend to drop in the first quarter of the year, rise during the second quarter and then fall again during the third quarter. “Historically, that’s a pattern that we’ve seen pretty consistently in the past few years,” Howard said.

Raytheon, Nokia and Ericsson all filed briefs with the Federal Circuit encouraging the court to decline the Cray mandamus on a motion to transfer from EDTX… Cray is asking the Federal Circuit to decide two issues: did the Eastern Texas court err in holding that a “regular and established place of business” need not be a physical presence; and did the district court err in determining that the residence of a single work-from-home employee constitutes a “regular and established place of business” of his employer.