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Apple to Close Stores in Eastern District of Texas to Fight Patent Trolls

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Re: Apple to Close Stores in Eastern District of Texas to Fight Patent Trolls

#111

Post by gamblor956 »

Aloha wrote: post #59
zazen wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The relevant excerpt is: >The plans are significant, as U.S. law states that patent infringement lawsuits may be filed "where the defendant has committed acts of infringement and has a regular and established place of business." By closing its stores in Eastern Texas, Apple is ending its established place of business in the district. Moving a store from one district of Texas to another obviously doesn't relate to the…

Having a location in that District is creating a nexus - you end up having legal residency in that location

No, you don't. Residency is not nexus. You can have nexus without having residency, but residency on its own gives rise to nexus.

Re: Apple to Close Stores in Eastern District of Texas to Fight Patent Trolls

#112

Post by alkibiades »

ABCLAW wrote: post #78
mrguyorama wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They don't want to re-define how patent law works because they sometimes use it to their advantage.

I think it's more that their legal department is busy with enabling their business. Which is doing well. Typically industry lobbying is performed through industry associations, not by companies themselves. Why would Apple shoulder the burden of the lobbying effort when all of the other tech companies would be happy to ride their coat-tails? Additionally, the political climate re IP lobbying in the past 5 years has be…

all oil companies and wall street lobby for their interests. don’t think it would just be apple shouldering it

Re: Apple to Close Stores in Eastern District of Texas to Fight Patent Trolls

#113

Post by Aloha »

zazen wrote: post #80
Aloha wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Having a location in that District is creating a nexus - you end up having legal residency in that location

IANAL, I can only go by what the article is saying. The article explicitly says "a U.S. corporation resides only in its state of incorporation". "Residency" in this sense is evidently not the same as "having an established place of business". Apple is avoiding having an "established place of business" in the eastern district.

As from a page linked from within the article:

"Despite the limitations imposed by TC Heartland, § 1400(b) offers an alternative path to a desired district “where the defendant has committed acts of infringement and has a regular and established place of business.” Merely months after TC Heartland, which did not address this alternative, the Federal Circuit in In re Cray[3] rejected the Eastern District of Texas’ expansive four-factor test and set forth three requirements for determining whether a defendant has a “regular and established place of business” in the district: (1) there must be a physical place in the district; (2) it must be regular and established; and (3) it must be the place of the defendant."

https://www.krcl.com/articles/patently-unpredictable-patent-...

Re: Apple to Close Stores in Eastern District of Texas to Fight Patent Trolls

#114

Post by sct202 »

comex wrote: post #29
phire wrote: post #5

I suspect this won't actually prevent lawsuits in the Eastern district. With internet shopping and the new store just across the district line, lawyers should be able to argue that Apple is indeed doing business in the region. It will just waste a bit of lawyer time. It almost feels like Apple is punishing the region for it's patent troll supporting ways.

That’s not true, thanks to recent precedent: https://www.krcl.com/articles/patently-unpredictable-patent-... > [T]he Federal Circuit in In re Cray rejected the Eastern District of Texas’ expansive four-factor test and set forth three requirements for determining whether a defendant has a “regular and established place of business” in the district: (1) there must be a physical place in the district; (2) it must be reg…

Oh dang. There are a bunch of hardware companies with offices in the North Dallas area (ex Ericsson, Nokia); I wonder if they're thinking of moving west or south to get out of the district.

Re: Apple to Close Stores in Eastern District of Texas to Fight Patent Trolls

#115

Post by johnm1019 »

SEJeff wrote: post #92
dublo7 wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed. My previous company has to deal with trolls like this. They somehow managed a patent on turning 2d pictures into 3d panoramas which Google and iPhone do in the phones. We used software from Germany but since it violated the patent and we were tiny, boom lawsuit. This supreme Court ruling saved the company because we got it transferred to our state and the judge laughed them away. It would be like suing a groc…

You might want to double check on "your" spell check patent :)

His spellcheck works fine, the grammar check is broken. :)

Re: Apple to Close Stores in Eastern District of Texas to Fight Patent Trolls

#116

Post by Aloha »

gamblor956 wrote: post #111
Aloha wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Having a location in that District is creating a nexus - you end up having legal residency in that location

No, you don't. Residency is not nexus. You can have nexus without having residency, but residency on its own gives rise to nexus.

As from a page linked from within the article:

"Despite the limitations imposed by TC Heartland, § 1400(b) offers an alternative path to a desired district “where the defendant has committed acts of infringement and has a regular and established place of business.” Merely months after TC Heartland, which did not address this alternative, the Federal Circuit in In re Cray[3] rejected the Eastern District of Texas’ expansive four-factor test and set forth three requirements for determining whether a defendant has a “regular and established place of business” in the district: (1) there must be a physical place in the district; (2) it must be regular and established; and (3) it must be the place of the defendant."

https://www.krcl.com/articles/patently-unpredictable-patent-...

Re: Apple to Close Stores in Eastern District of Texas to Fight Patent Trolls

#117

Post by elefanten »

bluejekyll wrote: post #90
elefanten wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1. I think your assumption of pay-to-play is too strong. It's true to some degree but it's not as simple as having the right budget. For one, there are always factions working against you. There are always multiple jurisdictions and branches to consider, with different incentives. Add currents of public opinion and how they impact electoral and business interests on top of it all... it's a complex puzzle. So even the…

1) agreed, though I would think that the combined companies could have larger sway than others. 2) I mostly disagree. Where software is so specialized and valuable, I anticipate that it would be held privately and not necessarily made public. This seems to me to be better protected by copyright and not patent law. IANAL, but copyright feels more appropriate, and while you might be right that there is some majestic so…

Fair points and I like your suggestions. Definitely no lawyer, but I see the theoretical value in IP broadly. Whether patents and software are the right configuration.. I hold very loose opinions there.

To bring it back to Apple, I have a hard time casting strong moral judgment on their stance when they're not patent trolling others, even if they're not leading the righteous revolution. Their Samsung lawsuit feels more along the lines of what you describe in the copyright realm -- it's a defense of their design / expression of the ideas.

Re: Apple to Close Stores in Eastern District of Texas to Fight Patent Trolls

#118

Post by sirmarksalot »

babypuncher wrote: post #107
kevin_b_er wrote: post #3

It seems quite reasonable for apple to avoid the renegade court. The court is known to intentionally violate the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure to the benefit of patent holders.[1] You must seek permission from the renegade judge in order to file Summary Judgement. "A party may move for summary judgment" They may not move for summary judgement, because the judge denies this in this court. "The court should state on…

Maybe I'm just really dumb, but can't anyone sued in this court just appeal to a higher court that isn't run by renegade turds?

Not a lawyer, but I'd presume the reason a defendant would file for summary judgment would be to avoid the financial burden associated with a meritless case. If summary judgment is rejected, then making an appeal would likely be more expensive than just settling with the plaintiff.

Re: Apple to Close Stores in Eastern District of Texas to Fight Patent Trolls

#119

Post by MagicPropmaker »

denart2203 wrote: post #70

Well, the eastern district of texas gets their just desserts for making it so easy for patent trolls to file there... GG.

It’s ״just deserts”. Plus your point is odd. It’s not the filing that’s easier.

Re: Apple to Close Stores in Eastern District of Texas to Fight Patent Trolls

#120

Post by ABCLAW »

btilly wrote: post #96
ABCLAW wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> And when the Supreme Court overturns them, the next case relying on Supreme Court precedent inevitably goes to the Federal Circuit, which has proven very willing to engage in sophistry to issue a new binding precedent that clearly is the opposite of what the Supreme Court meant. I get what you're trying to say, but I think your point at the end regarding the Federal Court trying to go behind the Supreme Court's bac…

Well obviously I don't agree. First of all from https://www.americanbar.org/content/dam/aba/migrated/intelpr... you can see that a higher portion of cases escalated from the Federal Circuit get reversed than any other federal circuit. Secondly from https://www.scotusblog.com/2018/12/empirical-scotus-the-heig... we see that over time the Supreme Court has been devoting more and more of its limited energy to overseeing…

Re: Last line. Yep. I do. In fact, the some of the cases your articles refer to directly refer to my amicus curiae contributions.

The Federal Circuit was created, in part, to create certainty in patents. They keep trying to make frameworks, but they've all got issues. The Supreme Court doesn't like that they have issues, and blows up their rulings, but does not put anything affirmative back in place.

So, functionally, what we get is a cycle of the Federal Court building their little sand castle on the beach, and the Supreme Court coming over to stomp on the sand castle because it has flaws.

The fact that the Supreme Court stomps more frequently, or the fact that almost all of the sand castles are destroyed has no bearing on whether or not the entire cycle of destruction is warranted.

If the Supreme Court had a better set of rules, they have plenty of judicial tools to make those rules known to the USPTO and lower courts.

But they don't.

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