Yesterday the Federal Circuit granted a mandamus petition to transfer a case against Apple out of the Western District of Texas to the Northern District of California, ordering that Judge Alan D. Albright had clearly erred in declining to transfer the case.
Patently O has a full summary of the opinion, including the strong dissent.
A couple of additional thoughts:
- It is interesting that the Federal Circuit did not have a problem with Apple filing its mandamus petition before the District Court had even ruled on the motion to transfer. Footnote 1 does limit this practice to the "particular circumstances of the case," but obviously it worked out well for Apple here.
- The Federal Circuit's opinion applies Fifth Circuit law. The Fifth Circuit uses a different standard than the Jumara factors applied in Delaware, but the two standards do overlap to some extent.
- The Court called out Judge Albright for continuing to work—"barrel[ing] ahead"—on the merits of the case pending a decision on the motion to transfer, and characterized that decision as "questionable." But that did not factor in to the grant of the motion to transfer.
- The Court held that the judge should have considered the facts at the time of the motion to transfer, not at the time of the decision on that motion. I've seen this issue come up before in transfer motions here in Delaware as well.
I expect this decision will have a limited impact in the District of Delaware for the time being. Obviously there are differences in the transfer analysis between the Fifth Circuit and the Third Circuit, and the judges in Delaware already regularly cite and apply the Federal Circuit's previous LINK_A_MEDIA mandamus decision laying out the Federal Circuit's views on the transfer analysis under Third Circuit law.
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