Joint Claim Construction—A New Tool For Navigating Venue In Patent Cases

The patent venue statute, 28 U.S.C. §1400(b), limits proper venue to “the judicial district where the defendant resides, or where the defendant has committed acts of infringement and has a regular and established place of business.”

In TC Heartland LLC v. Kraft Foods Grp. Brands LLC, the U.S. Supreme Court held that “for purposes of §1400(b) a domestic corporation ‘resides’ only in its State of incorporation.”

Following TC Heartland, district courts had different interpretations “about whether a corporation ‘resides’ under §1400(b) in every judicial district within its state of incorporation when the state has more than one judicial district.”

The Federal Circuit held in In re BigCommerce, Inc. that “for purposes of determining venue under §1400(b) in a state having multiple judicial districts, a corporate defendant shall be considered to ‘reside’ only in the single judicial district within that state where it maintains a principal place of business, or,