Cray Wins Summary Judgment Following Successful Venue Transfer Post TC-Heartland

IP Watchdogreported that the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Wisconsin granted summary judgment to supercomputer maker Cray on two supercomputer patents that had been asserted by Raytheon in Raytheon Company v. Cray.

The court granted summary judgment of non-infringement to Cray over Raytheon’s assertion of claims from two patents, U.S. Patent No. 7475274, Fault Tolerance and Recovery in a High-Performance Computing (HPC) System, and U.S. Patent No. 8190714, System and Method for Computer Cluster Virtualization Using Dynamic Boot Images and Virtual Disk.

IP Watchdog called the court’s order “the likely conclusion to a case that became an important part of the debate on proper venue in patent cases after the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in TC Heartland and aspects of how this case played out after venue was transferred point to the importance of that particular decision on U.S. patent litigation.”

Previously, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit granted Cray’s petition for a writ of mandamus, striking down Judge Gilstrap’s four-factor test as being too far removed from the language of the patent venue statute. The Federal Circuit held that a regular and established place of business (1) must be a physical place in the district; (2) must be a regular and established place of business; and (3) must be the place of the defendant, establishing the standard that will control most venue determinations in patent cases and limiting abusive forum shopping.

The Federal Circuit found that the private residence of Cray’s single remote employee did not meet this standard, and ordered the lawsuit against Cray to be transferred to the Western District of Wisconsin.

Cray is represented by Fenwick patent litigation partners David Tellekson, Bryan Kohm and Melanie Mayer, Ph.D.; and associates Jonathan McMichael, Elizabeth Hagan, Ph.D. and Christopher Larson.

The full article is available on IP Watchdog.​​​​​​