Federal Judiciary

Federal Circuit Denies Petition for Mandamus as to Venue Order in Motorola v. Vtech

By Michael C. Smith

Yesterday in In re Vtech Communications, Misc. Docket No. 909 (Jan. 6, 2010) the Federal Circuit denied a petition for writ of mandamus directed at one of Judge Folsom's orders denying transfer.  The opinion affirmed Judge Folsom's reliance in Motorola v. Vtech on his familiarity with the case (he had concluded the claims construction process) and faulted Vtech for not "actively and promptly" pursing the motion to transfer before the district court had invested considerable time and attention on discovery and completing the claims construction process.  (Ed. note: I haven't checked, but it may be that the motion was not filed until after VW and TS Tech came out, at which point the case would have been over a year old.  But according to TS Tech, In re VW didn't change the law in the Fifth Circuit with regard to venue (no seriously, it said that), so perhaps the court decided that  shouldn't provide any justification for a party's deciding only at that advanced stage to file a motion).  Interestingly, a related argument was made in the Federal Circuit's prior mandamus denial in In re Telular this spring, in which it faulted the petitioner for waiting months after the order denying its motion before it sought mandamus relief (it, too waited until In re TS Tech came out, despite the fact that Judge Ward's orders denying transfer in the TS Tech and Telular cases came out on the same day).

The court also noted that unlike Genetech in which there were no witnesses in Texas, in this case there was at least one identified nonparty witness who was a resident of the Eastern District of Texas.  There was also a source of documents in San Antonio and some of the witnesses were in fact closer to Texas than to Oregon.  Taking all of this into consideration, the Federal Circuit concluded that because "the facts are rationally capable of providing reasons for what the district court has done", mandamus should not issue, which would interfere with the approaching trial date.

There is a happy ending - apparently by coincidence the parties jointly asked Judge Folsom to stay the case yesterday as well, which may be an indication that the case has settled.

By my count that's seven Federal Circuit venue rulings this year, with four petitions for writs of mandamus granted and three denied.

Full post as published by Eastern District of Texas Federal Court Practice on January 07, 2010 (boomark / email).