Xcelis LLC, an affiliate of Empire IP LLC, has filed suit against Panasonic (2:17-cv-02463), accusing the company of infringement through provision of its Link2Cell phones. The patent-at-issue is generally related to a communications system set up to place either a landline or wireless call. The new case follows on the heels of a dismissal with prejudice in Xcelis’s first case in the campaign, filed against Plantronics in April and ending on September 19.

In a case before District Judge Rodney Gilstrap, an NPE has filed an opposition to several motions to dismiss arguing that a domestic corporation might be deemed to reside outside of its state of incorporation despite this past May’s TC Heartland decision. In TC Heartland, the US Supreme Court held that 1988 revisions to the general venue statute did not change (as the Federal Circuit had ruled) the previously understood residence of a domestic corporation for venue purposes: such a defendant “resides” only in the state in which it was incorporated. District courts have been grappling with the implications of this return to the earlier understanding of venue in patent cases in the weeks since TC Heartland was handed down. Script Security Solutions LLC, an affiliate of patent monetization firm Empire IP LLC, has now urged Judge Gilstrap to treat venue in Texas, a large state with multiple judicial districts, under a different portion of the general venue statute than was considered in TC Heartland, a decision involving a case brought in the small, single-district state of Delaware.