A federal judge named Alan Albright finally granted Google LLC’s request to move a patent dispute over its famous Pixel smartphones from his Waco, Texas court to courts of California. He is famous for resisting everyone’s requests to transfer cases. The U.S. District Judge Alan Albright cited several decisions from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit where he reversed his own rulings in similar cases. However, he clearly mentioned that some of those reversals were out of step with years of precedent.

The Federal Circuit also asked Albright several times to transfer patent cases from his court to the Northern District of California as it would be clearly more convenient to deal with. The transfer requests generally come from tech companies including Google as they are based in California but they had to face lawsuits in Albright’s court.

It is a surveyed fact that more patent plaintiffs prefer to sue in Albright's court than anywhere else in the country because they believe that his procedures favor patent owners over defendants. There is another case where a patent-holding company named Super Interconnect Technologies (SIT) sued Google in the month of March. The SIT seemed to argue “Google’s smartphones infringing our patents related to memory-storage technology.” Google made a request to Albright for moving the case to California where he preferred rejecting the motion in the month of September.

Albright gave a second thought of reconsidering his own accord in the wake of Federal Circuit decisions against his venue rulings in other similar cases. He also cited some appeals court's additional guidance while approving Google’s request.

Albright said based on Federal Circuit precedent, “The witness considerations favor moving the case, but also the appeals court has nullified a local circuit rule favoring shorter travel distances for witnesses and made other rulings on the issue that went against decades of jurisprudence by other courts. The Federal Circuit's rulings have muddled what facts are relevant in determining which court can hear the case faster. The appeals court has made contradictory statements about the factor's importance in decisions on the venue.”

Google’s case was represented by attorneys Darin Snyder, David Almeling, and Mark Liang of O'Melveny & Myers; and Mark Mann of Mann Tindel Thompson and on the other hand SIT’s by attorneys Wesley Hill of Ward Smith & Hill; and Jeffrey Bragalone of Bragalone Olejko Saad. The case can be reached with the name Super Interconnect Technologies v. Google LLC, U.S. District Court for the Western District of Texas, bearing case no. 6:21-cv-00259.

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