AIA trial proceedings, such as IPR's, provide alternatives
to traditional patent litigation, as Scott Kamholz and I discussed
in our article "Good, Fast, Cheap Certainty: The Case for Patent
Office Litigation," (recently published in The New York
Law Journal). When considering an IPR and/or traditional
litigation, factors such as cost, speed and convenience must be
considered. On March 11, 2016, the Federal Circuit took up the
venue standard in patent litigation — one of the
considerations affecting those very factors.
Heartland was sued by Kraft in Delaware, where Kraft is
incorporated and where Heartland has two percent of its allegedly
infringing sales. In its petition for a writ of mandamus In re
TC Heartland LLC, No. 2016-0105 (Fed. Cir., argued March 11,
2016, oral argument recording here), Heartland asked
the Federal Circuit to reconsider the current expansive venue
standard which provides venue wherever an entity is subject to
personal jurisdiction.
