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From Law360:

The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday put tighter restrictions on where patent owners can file infringement lawsuits, a decision that upends nearly 30 years of established practice and will likely force many lawsuits out of the patent litigation hotbed of the Eastern District of Texas.
In an 8-0 decision, the Supreme Court reversed a Federal Circuit rule that effectively allowed a patent holder to file suit anywhere a defendant makes sales, which critics complained has fueled a plague of forum shopping and a concentration of cases in a few jurisdictions.
Ruling in favor of liquid sweetener maker TC Heartland LLC, the justices reinstated a more restrictive standard from a 1957 Supreme Court decision, saying it remained good law.

“We therefore hold that a domestic corporation ‘resides’ only in its State of incorporation for purposes of the patent venue statute,” the court wrote.

Innkeepers, shopkeepers, and others in the E.D. Texas that rely on patent lawsuits for a disproportionately large part of their economy are likely slack-jawed right now, for good reason.  Their sleepy little town is about to become just that... a sleepier little town.
Read more at Law360 here.

The case is TC Heartland LLC v. Kraft Food Brands Group LLC, case number 16-341, in the Supreme Court of the United States.
We previously reported on White Kunckle's assertion of U.S. Pat. No. 8,540,575 against EA.  Last year, EA secured a win against the patent under 35 USC 101 when the District of Utah found the claims were directed to ineligible subject matter.  That decision was appealed to the Federal Circuit, who affirmed the holding on April 6, 2017.  (Fed. Cir., Case no. 2016-2286).

EA also had an inter partes review pending against the '575 patent.  In view of the Federal Circuit's decision, White Knuckle informed the USPTO that they disclaimed every claim of the patent.  As a result, the USPTO terminated the IPR proceedings on May 12.  (IPR2016-00634).

Ineligible subject matter remains one of the most frequent attacks on patent validity.  The lines have become more clear since Alice v CLS Bank in 2014, but it is still very difficult to predict whether any particular patent claim directed to software features will survive.  White Knuckle's '575 patent did not.
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