Disputes over venue in patent cases often turn on decisions by the Federal Circuit, which regularly addresses mandamus petitions arising from district court venue challenges. For motions to transfer for convenience, though, it is the regional circuit courts that set the applicable law within their jurisdictions, which the Federal Circuit must then interpret. For patent suits filed in Texas, it is the Fifth Circuit that determines those standards—yet that appeals court, per its own admission, infrequently issues new precedent on venue matters. In the relative absence of such guidance, the Federal Circuit has forged its own path, intervening regularly in the past few years when addressing venue motions denied by Western District of Texas Judge Alan D. Albright—holding in February that a late-2022 Fifth Circuit decision arising in a non-IP case, seen by some as counseling greater deference, actually supported this approach. Now, the Federal Circuit may get further backing from a recent Fifth Circuit ruling (In re: TikTok) that reversed a transfer denial by Judge Albright in a copyright case, based on some of the same reasons cited by the Federal Circuit in patent matters.