Acting on a writ of mandamus from the District of Delaware, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit recently issued a decision in In re TC Heartland, No. 16-105 (Fed. Cir. April 29, 2016), a case that some observers believed had the potential to restrict significantly the venue where patent infringement lawsuits may be brought. The salient issue before the court in TC Heartland was whether the 2011 amendments to 28 U.S.C. Section 1391 changed the law governing venue for patent infringement suits in a manner that nullified the holding in VE Holding v. Johnson Gas Appliance, 917 F.2d 1574 (Fed. Cir. 1990), which set the current precedent for venue. Ultimately, TC Heartland indicated that the 2011 amendments to Section 1391, if anything, broadened the applicability of the general venue statute, thus maintaining the status quo of where a patent infringement action may be brought, for now.
The history of the patent infringement venue issue involves the meaning of the term “resides” in 28 U.S.C. Sections 1391 and 1400 and the interplay between the two sections. First, the Supreme Court held in Fourco Glass v. Transmirra Products, 353 U.S. 222, 228-29 (1957) that “28 U.S.C. Section 1400(b) is the sole and exclusive provision controlling venue in patent infringement actions, and that it is not to be supplemented by the provisions of 28 U.S.C. Section 1391(c).” The Supreme Court reasoned that Section 1391(c) “is a general corporation venue statute, whereas Section 1400(b) is a special venue statute applicable, specifically, to all defendants in a particular type of action … [and] the law is settled that however inclusive may be the general language of a statute, it will not be held to apply to a matter specifically dealt with in another part of the same enactment.”
