Eastern District of Texas under threat after Federal Circuit ruling (full version)
09 January 2009
Eileen McDermott, New York
The US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit last week granted a petition for writ of mandamus ordering a patent case to be transferred out of the Eastern District of Texas, possibly signalling the end of that district as the most popular patent venue in the country
In October, an en banc panel of the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals granted a writ of mandamus - or an order issued by a superior court compelling a lower court to adhere to the law - in In re Volkswagen, claiming that the Eastern District of Texas had "clearly abused its discretion" in refusing to transfer a product liability case out of its jurisdiction.
The panel said that the case should be transferred because the Marshall Division of the Eastern District of Texas had "no connection to the parties, the witnesses, or the facts of this case".
Applying this precedent, a three-judge panel of the Federal Circuit - comprising judges Rader, Michel and Prost - on December 29 held that...
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