“We are not prepared to say that the district court clearly abused its discretion in making what here was a case-specific assessment of the record that it was uniquely well-positioned to do”. So ruled the Federal Circuit last week in denying an Apple petition for a writ of mandamus that would have required Western District of Texas Judge Alan D. Albright to transfer for convenience a case filed by Resonant Systems, Inc. (d/b/a RevelHMI) to the Northern District of California. Observers have noted greater recent deference from the appeals court concerning Judge Albright’s denials of motions for convenience transfers, the reason for which deference might be the simplest one, observable simply by considering the heart of Judge Albright’s denial of Apple’s motion here.

One of the public interest factors to be considered in a convenience transfer analysis is relative court congestion. The Federal Circuit has repeatedly corrected how Western District of Texas Judge Alan D. Albright has assessed time-to-trial stats, most frequently set against those from the Northern District of California, in last year’s In re Google decision instructing that “this factor should not weigh against transfer when the plaintiff ‘is not engaged in product competition in the marketplace and is not threatened in the market in a way that, in other patent cases, might add urgency to case resolution’”. Over in the Eastern District of Texas, Chief Judge Rodney Gilstrap has rejected a motion for reconsideration of a denial of a convenience transfer motion through an underlying order that makes clear that while he “finds it odd to consider the marketplace status of the parties in assessing this public interest factor related to court congestion”, a district court is bound by In re Google “to afford this factor no weight”.

Resonant Systems, Inc. (d/b/a RevelHMI) has filed suit against Apple (7:23-cv-00077), targeting the provision of the “Taptic Engine” within various iPhones, MacBooks, and Apple Watches with three patents previously asserted in this campaign, together with a fourth, appearing for the first time. The bunch is broadly related to vibration motor technology, with the first case in this campaign, as RPX has previously reported, directed at a very different type of vibration.

Resonant Systems, Inc. (d/b/a RevelHMI) has filed separate Eastern District of Texas suits against Samsung (2:22-cv-00423) and Sony (2:22-cv-00424), targeting the support of certain haptic feedback functionality within their respective Galaxy-series smartphones and Playstation 5 DualSense controllers. Three patents are asserted against Sony, two of them in suit in the Samsung case, all generally relate to “linear vibration motor technology”. These cases are not RevelHMI’s first; in 2015, the plaintiff filed a short-lived case with initial infringement allegations that suggest that it contemplated a very different direction for this campaign.