Charter Rebuffed by Appeals Court in Bid to Escape Patent Suit

The Federal Circuit declined to intervene to force the dismissal of an East Texas patent-infringement lawsuit against Charter Communications Inc.

The appeals court Monday rejected a bid for a writ of mandamus from the cable and internet giant, which does business as Spectrum. The company had argued that patent-assertion entities have been improperly filing suits against it and Charter Communications Operations LLC in the US District Court for the Eastern District of Texas—a patent-litigation hub—based on the activities of its subsidiary Spectrum Gulf Coast LLC.

Under rulings from Eastern District Chief Judge J. Rodney Gilstrap, “nearly any other corporation with ...