Popular Texas IP Court Threatened By A SCOTUS Case

Rampant venue-shopping in patent infringement cases could become a thing of the past, depending on how the Court rules in a case now on the docket. The classic scenario, and the one that riles critics, is for a plaintiff to use the current interpretation of the patent infringement venue statute as a means of filing the case in one of the patent-friendly – or as some critics would have it, troll-friendly – venues. The most prominent among these is the Eastern District of Texas, currently said to be fielding about 40 percent of such cases. Now, in TC Heartland LLC v. Kraft Foods Group Brands LLC, that interpretation of the venue statute is  being challenged. Specifically, the challenge is to an interpretation that allows filing in any district where the defendant is subject to personal jurisdiction, which, this post notes, “for many corporations means virtually any venue in the land.” TC Heartland, which has been sued by Kraft in a dispute over what’s described as water enhancer patents, essentially wants to get this case into its home court in Indiana instead of the District of Delaware, the venue where Kraft filed the case. TC Heartland argues that a proper interpretation of the venue statute would put the matter in the venue where the defendant is incorporated, which in its case was Carmel, Indiana.