Last May, Stanford Law professor Mark Lemley published a study on IP forum shopping. The study’s most surprising finding: the U.S. district court for the Eastern District of Texas isn’t among the five most plaintiff-friendly jurisdictions for patent litigation. Nevertheless, patent plaintiffs just keep filing cases in Marshall and Tyler, Texas, and pulling all sorts of maneuvers to make it seem as though they have business connections there. Case in point: Allvoice Developments, which operates its voice-recognition patent-licensing business from the United Kingdom. Allvoice also, however, has an office in Tyler. And 16 days before Allvoice, represented by Gardere Wynne Sewell, filed an infringement suit against Microsoft Corporation in 2009, the company incorporated under the laws of Texas.
That was enough for federal district court judge Leonard Davis to deny Microsoft’s motion to move the case out of East Texas. (Microsoft’s Weil, Gotshal & Manges lawyers proposed either the Western District of Washington, where most Microsoft witnesses are located; or the Southern District of Texas, where a previous suit over the same patent was litigated.)
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