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12 November 2021PatentsAlex Baldwin

Fed Circ orders Albright to transfer another patent case

The US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit has ordered Texas judge Alan Albright to transfer yet another patent infringement case out of the US District Court for the Western District of Texas.

In an order handed down on Wednesday, November 10, the circuit said Albright should not have delayed, nor denied, Quest Diagnostics’ writ of mandamus to transfer a lawsuit over prenatal DNA testing technology out of the court.

The case will now be transferred to the US District Court for the Central District of California, which is where several of Quest Diagnostics key witnesses in the case are located.

The three-judge circuit panel said that the Waco court did not prioritise the transfer motion, waiting “nearly eight months” to rule on it. Albright instead gave “undue priority to the merits of the case” by proceeding through claim construction before addressing the transfer motion, according to the order.

This is the latest of several recent patent cases that the Federal Circuit has ordered to be transferred out of the Waco court following judge Albright’s delay and denial of transfer motions.

Invoking the previous cases, the panel wrote: “We had already instructed the district court on numerous occasions that ‘once a party files a transfer motion, disposition of that motion should take top priority in the case.”

Case History

Ravgen filed this suit against Quest in the Texas court on October 16, 2020, alleging that Quest’s QNatal Advanced test of infringing two patents relating to non-invasive tests for prenatal genetic disorders.

Quest moved to transfer the case in December 2020, arguing that the California court was a “more convenient” forum for the proceedings as its employees with the most knowledge of the QNatal technology worked in its California offices.

Quest also designed, developed, and continues to perform QNatal Advanced testing only in the Central District of California.

It also argued that Ravgen, which is headquartered in Maryland, had “no meaningful connections” to the Western District of Texas.

Ravgen responded by arguing that “judicial economy” strongly favoured denying the motion, citing three other related complaints it had filed in the court: Ravgen, Inc. v. PerkinElmer, Ravgen, Inc. v. Natera, Inc. and Ravgen, Inc. v. Lab’y Corp.

The Texas District Court denied Quest’s motion on August 20, 2021, finding that the local-interest factor “slightly favoured” transfer, but that judicial economy considerations weighed “strongly against” the transfer.

This led Quest to file a petition with the Federal Circuit on September 20, 2021.

Albright’s critics

Judge Albright has been criticised for engaging in “inappropriate conduct” to make the Waco court the go-to court for patent litigation in the US.

Republican Senator Thom Tillis and Democrat Patrick Leahy co-signed a letter addressed to Chief Justice John Roberts that expressed concern over the “extreme concentration” of patent litigation before the Texas court.

The senators accused the judge of “abusing” his discretion by denying transfer motions.

As a result of the denied transfers, there has been a “flood of mandamus petitions” before the US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit. This has compelled the circuit to “correct his [Albright’s] clear and egregious abuses of discretion” by granting mandamus relief and ordering the transfer of cases.

Denying transfer

On the same day as the Quest transfer order, the circuit denied a petition from XConnect to re-transfer a patent lawsuit from the Waco court back to the US District Court for the District of Colorado.

XConnect filed a lawsuit in the Colorado court seeking a declaratory judgment of noninfringement against DynaEnergetics, which had accused XConnect of infringing its “well bore perforating” patent.

DynaEnergetics, which had previously sued XConnect competitors over the same patent in Waco, moved to transfer XConnect’s lawsuit to the same court, claiming it was  “more convenient” to resolve all the cases there.

The Colorado court concluded that “considerations of judicial economy and convenience” weighed in favour of transferring the case, leading XConnect to file a petition seeking to vacate the transfer.

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