Amazon Mandamus Petition Takes Aim at Controversial Texas Judge
Amazon seeks a writ of mandamus from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit directing U.S. District Judge Alan Albright for the Western District of Texas in Waco to vacate his May 31 order denying Amazon’s transfer of a patent infringement action to the U.S. District Court for Northern California and his Oct. 18 order denying reconsideration and transfer, said Amazon’s petition Thursday (docket 23-104).
Albright refused to transfer the case based on his misunderstanding of the role of the operating system in the call-initiation functionality of Alexa devices that were accused of infringement, said Amazon’s petition. The OS and related hardware drivers “do not know what information they are sending and receiving and are accordingly agnostic to the contents of the communications at issue,” it said. “They simply provide connections to various hardware components,” such as speakers, microphones and Wi-Fi chips, it said.
The judge “misunderstood or disregarded that fact,” treated the OS as key to the infringement allegations against Amazon, and concluded that the presence of Amazon DeviceOS team members in Austin justified keeping the case in Western Texas, said the petition. “But the record was clear,” it said. The Austin-based employees “have no knowledge of the contents of the accused messaging functionalities because the OS is agnostic as to the information transmitted and received,” said Amazon. “The OS may be necessary for operation of the accused devices, but its role is tangential at best and will not be disputed at trial or on summary judgment.”
Albright made “matters worse” when he ignored that there are many more DeviceOS team members in Northern California than in Western Texas, said the petition. Unlike the Austin DeviceOS team, it was the Northern California-based DeviceOS team “that interacted with the middleware team during development of the accused Alexa calling functionality,” it said.
The judge additionally erred “in concluding that court congestion weighed against transfer,” said the petition. Albright recognized that he had a “significantly busier docket” than Northern California, yet he “ruled that its slightly faster average historical time to trial weighed against transfer,” said Amazon. The Federal Circuit “has repeatedly held that such statistics have little relevance to the court-congestion analysis and cannot defeat transfer where, as here, the center of gravity of the case is in another district,” it said.
The Federal Circuit has “repeatedly scolded” Albright for his refusal to transfer patent cases out of his jurisdiction for more fitting venues, said a McDermott Will analysis last week (see 2211180001). It did so again Nov. 8 when it vacated his scheduling order and directed him to postpone fact discovery and other substantive proceedings until after he considered Apple’s motion for transfer to Northern California, said the firm. Albright assumed office in September 2018 as an appointee of then-President Donald Trump.
Mandamus is warranted here because Albright “clearly erred” and abused his discretion in denying Amazon’s motion to transfer, said the petition. His denial “imputed undue relevance to DeviceOS employees located in Austin, yet simultaneously discounted Amazon’s more detailed identification of DeviceOS employees located in Sunnyvale,” it said. His “fundamental error infected” his analysis of the witness-convenience, local-interest and sources-of-proof factors that weigh in the transfer decision, it said.