Patent Owners May Look to Business Ties After Venue Ruling

Patent owners may start digging deeper into business relationships to steer cases to certain venues after the Federal Circuit ruled that a lawsuit against Alphabet Inc. subsidiary Google LLC couldn’t be heard in the Eastern District of Texas.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit opened a potential new line of dispute in patent venue fights when it ruled recently that a place of business requires the physical presence of an employee or agent. Having cache servers in the Eastern District, as Google does, wasn’t enough without the presence of an employee or agent doing company business, it ...