Fed Circ removes Apple patent suit from Texas litigation hotspot
Apple has succeeded in its bid to move a patent infringement suit to California after the US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit ruled that the US District Court of the Western District of Texas should transfer the case.
In a decision handed down yesterday, Monday, November 9, the Federal Circuit reversed Judge Alan Albright’s decision against relocating Uniloc’s patent infringement suit against Apple.
The Western District of Texas’ Waco Division has gained notoriety in US legal circles as a patent litigation hot spot since Judge Albright joined the bench two years ago.
This dispute between the two technology companies arose in September 2019, when Uniloc sued Apple, alleging that several Apple products infringed its patent US number 6,467,088. According to Uniloc, “Apple’s software download functionality, including how Apple determines compatibility for application and operating system software updates through the App Store, infringes....”.
In November 2019, Apple moved to transfer the case to California on the “basis that it would be clearly more convenient to litigate the case in that district”.
The district court denied the motion in June 2020, after which Apple filed a petition for a writ of mandamus.
The Federal Circuit granted the petition, stating that the district court legally erred in considering witnesses as “sources of proof” and that it also “misapplied the law to the facts in analysing the location of relevant documents”.
The court also criticised the district court after it “barreled ahead” on the merits of the case before ruling on Apple’s transfer motion. “Once a party files a transfer motion, disposition of that motion should take top priority in the case,” it said. According to the Federal Circuit, the district court also placed too much significance on the fact that the inventors of the disputed patent and the prosecutors attached to the case live closer to Texas than California.
The court said: “We conclude that Apple has demonstrated that the district court clearly abused its discretion in denying transfer,” the court said in a precedential order.
Judge Kimberly Moore, however, dissented from the Federal Circuit’s opinion. “I am concerned that the majority’s blatant disregard for the district court’s thorough fact findings and for our role in a petition for mandamus will invite further petitions based almost entirely on ad hominem attacks on esteemed jurists similar to those Apple wages here,” she said.
But the majority denounced her comments as “baseless and counterproductive”.
“If anything, the fact that our order completely ignores what the dissent calls ‘ad hominem attacks’ will discourage future litigants from wasting precious briefing space on such statements,” the court said.
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