On February 13, 2020, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (CAFC) reversed an August 7, 2019 U.S District Court for the Eastern District of Texas decision in the matter of SEVEN Networks v. Google, finding that servers stored in datacenters within the district do not constitute a “regular and established place of business” under the patent venue statute.
CAFC found that rented space in an internet service provider’s (ISP’s) datacenter can serve as a “place,” but that the regular presence of an employee at the argued place of business is required to satisfy the statute. The lawsuit began in May 2017, when SEVEN Networks alleged Google infringed patents related to software and systems to improve battery, CPU, and memory of mobile devices.
