As the Western District of Texas remains atop the venue charts, an issue of ongoing interest for patent litigants has been how District Judge Alan D. Albright has handled motions to transfer. Most of this narrative has thus far focused on his restrictive approach to convenience transfers, a posture that may be shifting in response to a series of recent reversals by the Federal Circuit. However, less attention has been paid to his treatment of motions alleging improper venue, since—unlike former NPE hotspots like the Eastern District of Texas—many companies have active operations in West Texas, and may therefore “reside” in that venue as established under the Supreme Court’s 2017 TC Heartland decision. While such a venue challenge may not be an option for some defendants, recent orders by Judge Albright suggest that improper venue challenges may succeed in his court for companies with a sufficiently minimal presence there.

As the Western District of Texas has risen in popularity as a patent venue, an appellate back-and-forth over its handling of outbound transfers has played a key role in that history—and now, one such dispute between NPE Precis Group LLC and TracFone Wireless will see a second chapter. It is rare for litigation to prompt a single writ of mandamus, much less two writs in such short succession. The Federal Circuit’s first writ, from early March 2021, ordered the district court to stay the underlying litigation during the pendency of TracFone’s motion to transfer. A second writ, from late last week, reversed the lower court’s subsequent, belated ruling and transferred the case to the Southern District of Florida, where TracFone’s principal place of business is located.

The past year has seen a growing rift develop between the Federal Circuit and Western District of Texas Judge Alan D. Albright on the issue of convenience transfers, a form of relief he has rarely granted since taking the bench in 2018. This divide has encompassed both Judge Albright’s substantive handling of such transfer motions, and increasingly, his tendency to let those motions sit undecided for months while proceeding with other issues. The latter trend has continued with another recent Federal Circuit ruling: on March 8, the appellate court partly granted a mandamus petition filed by TracFone Wireless, staying litigation filed against it by Precis Group LLC until Judge Albright decided a venue challenge that has remained pending for eight months. Three days later, Judge Albright issued that ruling—declining to dismiss or transfer the case.