Denial of Patent Case Transfer to Calif. ‘Clearly Erroneous’: Amazon Reply

U.S. District Judge Alan Albright’s denial in the Western District of Texas of Amazon’s motion to transfer a VoIP-Pal patent infringement lawsuit to the U.S. District Court for Northern California was based on “clearly erroneous” factual and legal premises, said Amazon’s reply brief Friday (docket 23-104) in the U.S. Appeals Court for the Federal Circuit. VoIP-Pal’s brief opposing Amazon’s petition for mandamus relief to vacate Albright’s denial (see 2211300028) “fails to defend those errors,” said Amazon. VoIP’s infringement claims focus on “access codes and related messages sent and received by a mobile phone” to initiate a call over the internet, it said. Amazon’s noninfringement defenses focus on the inability of Alexa devices to send and receive messages containing the required content, it said. The accused messages are generated or interpreted and “used by Amazon Calling 'middleware,' and the team that developed the accused functionality” is based in Sunnyvale in the Northern District of California, it said. “People on that Sunnyvale team will be the key technical witnesses in the case. VoIP-Pal does not dispute that those witnesses are critical to the case.” Venue determinations “are supposed to be practical analyses” that consider the convenience of witnesses who will actually testify, the location of evidence that will actually matter, “and the local interests regarding the issues actually in dispute,” it said. The “material witnesses, evidence, and local interests” in this case are all “centered” in the Northern District of California, it said. A “few material witnesses” may be located elsewhere, but none is in the Western District of Texas, it said.