Western District of Texas Judge Robert L. Pitman just transferred a case filed by DH International Ltd. against Apple last September, for convenience, to the Northern District of California. In doing so, the court denied a motion for three months of venue discovery; found the most important factor (cost of attendance for willing witnesses) “weighs heavily toward transfer”, crediting “Apple’s contention that none of its relevant employees are in WDTX and that most of them are located in California” as “especially weighty”; and assessed the most speculative factor (court congestion) as tilting slightly in favor of transfer, noting that “recent time-to-trial statistics indicate that the median time-to-trial for patent cases is 526 days in the NDCA, but 827 days in this district”. That approach (and result) lands in stark relief against other recent transfer rulings from elsewhere in West Texas.

Inventor-controlled DH International Ltd. has filed separate Western District of Texas cases against Alphabet (Google) (1:23-cv-01116) and Apple (1:23-cv-01114) over the respective provision of the Apple Pay and Google Pay mobile payment platforms, as well as related hardware. The two patents-in-suit are generally related to a “portable electronic device” that, upon detection of an external cue, will initiate a data exchange, and if not, will communicate information to a user instead. Both were asserted—by a different but associated plaintiff—against Samsung in an Eastern District of Texas suit that ran from October 2020 through August 2021.