Last week, Western District of Texas Judge Alan D. Albright denied a motion to stay a case against Sony filed by ACQIS LLC, a subsidiary of Acqis Technology Incorporated, and transferred from the Waco Division to the Austin Division. Sony had sought a convenience transfer to the Northern District of California, asking in the alternative for the move to Austin from Waco. In July, Judge Albright granted the transfer—to Austin, where he will remain the presiding judge. Sony filed a motion to stay the case, pending mandamus review of that transfer decision by the Federal Circuit, which motion Judge Albright denied—in a text-only order on the docket—the next day.
Within that somewhat lengthy docket entry, Judge Albright ruled (1) that Sony's petition for writ of mandamus is unlikely to succeed on the merits because "the Court promptly ruled on Sony's transfer motion and, in fact, granted Sony's motion to transfer to the Austin Division"; (2) that Sony cannot claim irreparable harm in the absence of a stay because "there are no pending venue disputes in this Court" after it promptly ruled on Sony's motion to transfer and because "Sony cannot suffer irreparable harm where the Court granted its alternative motion to transfer venue to the Austin Division"; (3) that a stay would substantially harm ACQIS "by delaying ACQIS's ability to enforce its patent rights" and by "destroy[ing] the current case schedule, thereby delaying discovery and ACQIS's right to timely enforce its patents"; and (4) that public policy "weighs against a stay here because the Court finds that Sony has not presented a substantial case on the merits".
As to the underlying motion to transfer to the Northern District of California, Judge Albright found two factors to favor the move: cost of attendance for willing witnesses ("in favor of transfer") and relative ease of access to sources of proof ("slightly favors transfer"). However, he found that the presence of many other mature cases filed by ACQIS in the Western District of Texas "[w]eighs strongly against transfer" under the "All other practical problems" prong of the analysis, thus preventing Sony from clearing its burden of proving that the Northern District of California is the "clearly more convenient venue" (emphasis in the original). As to the transfer to Austin, the court noted that the "All other practical problems" shifts to neutral, tipping the analysis away from Waco—and allowing Judge Albright to keep the case.
Judge Albright's rulings on motions for convenience transfers have spawned multiple writs of mandamus from the Federal Circuit, often taking issue with how Judge Albright has treated the individual eight factors to be considered in such an analysis and how that court has weighed them against each other. The procedure in Judge Albright's courtroom often now has an extensive early stage of discovery related to venue, after a defendant files a motion for a convenience transfer and before the court can turn to any of the case's merits, including claim construction. Judge Albright frequently now hands down a sealed order on any such motion, docketing a public version days or weeks later, and while all of this activity has been traditionally limited to requests for transfers for convenience, RingCentral recently filed a petition for a writ after its motion to dismiss (or in the alternative transfer) for improper venue was denied. A ruling has yet to issue there.
This order in the case filed by ACQIS against Sony is also not the first time that Judge Albright has turned to an alternative transfer request. Earlier this year, Judge Albright denied an Apple motion for a convenience transfer to the Northern District of California but did not keep the case, filed by Atlantic IP Service Limited's Togail Technologies Limited, instead transferring it to the Southern District of California, which Togail had offered up due to the importance of evidence and witnesses from third party Qualcomm.
Sony's petition seeking the Federal Circuit's intervention was filed on August 8, as was Sony's motion for a stay and its motion to expedite briefing on that motion for a stay. A claim construction hearing in the that case was scheduled for August 11. For background coverage of this complicated campaign, see Data Transmission Campaign Snags Two More April Defendants (April 2023).
Originally published 14 August, 2023
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