Posts Tagged: "Kraft Foods"

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.

A $1 trillion a year industry not wanting to pay innovators less than a 1% royalty on the innovations they appropriate (i.e., steal) for their own profits seems like a terrible price to pay given the national security and economic consequences of forfeiting our world leadership to the Europeans and Chinese… Google and Uber are locked in a patent battle over self-driving automobiles, so does that make Google or Uber a patent troll? What about General Electric, Apple, Samsung, Microsoft, Cisco, Oracle, Whirlpool, Kraft Foods, Caterpillar, Seiko Epson, Amgen, Bayer, Genzyme, Sanofi-Aventis, and Honeywell, to name just a few?

What follows is reaction from a distinguished panel of industry insiders who have been following this case. Each have offered their own instant analysis, several pointing out that important questions remain about what this Supreme Court decision will mean for the many thousands of patent cases already filed, many that are now in inappropriate venues. It is probably fair to say that the ruling did not surprise most of our panel, although several point to the Supreme Court’s decision as more in a decade-plus line of cases that have continually eroded the rights of patent owners.

The Supreme Court reversed the Federal Circuit and ruled that 28 U.S.C. 1400(b) remains the only applicable patent venue statute, that 28 U.S.C. 1391(c) did not modify or amend 1400(b) or the Court’s 1957 ruling in Fourco Glass Co. v. Transmirra Products Corp., and that the term “residence” in 28 U.S.C. 1400(b) means only the state in which a company is incorporated. The importance of this ruling should be immediately felt on patent litigation in the United States. No longer will a patent owner be able to sue an infringing defendant in a district court where the defendant is subject to personal jurisdiction. Instead, patent infringement lawsuits will only be able to be filed in districts within states where the infringing defendant is incorporated, or in districts where there has been an act of infringement and the defendant has a regular and established place of business.

Because patent trolls prefer filing in the Eastern District of Texas, the thinking goes that it will be a significant blow to patent trolls if the Supreme Court does not agree with the Federal Circuit. In other words, the days will be numbered for patent trolls if the Supreme Court determines that Congress did not expanded patent venue with the 1988 amendment that made the statutory definition of corporate residence found in § 1391 applicable to patent cases. That conventional wisdom is wrong!… Reflection Code has brought patent infringement actions in the Eastern District of Texas, but on March 31, 2017, Reflection Code brought two separate patent infringement lawsuits in the Eastern District of Michigan — one against Bissell, Inc. and the other against Mattel, Inc.

On Monday, March 27th, the U.S. Supreme Court heard oral arguments in TC Heartland LLC v. Kraft Food Group Brands LLC. The case, arising from allegations of patent infringement over liquid water enhancement products, will ask the court to decide whether 28 U.S.C. Section 1400(b), the patent venue statute which provides that judicial actions for patent suits take place in the district within which the defendant resides, is supplemented by 28 U.S.C. Section 1391(c), which provides that an entity may reside in multiple districts.