WacoWatch

On August 24, 2023, a jury in the Western District of Texas, Waco Division with Judge Albright presiding, found for defendant U.S. Well Services, LLC. The verdict found U.S. Well Services’ Clean Fleet electric hydraulic fracturing fleets did not infringe three asserted patents.

It is common practice for parties in patent litigation to bring joint motions to stay to finalize terms of settlement when they have reached settlement in principle.

On March 25, 2022, Plaintiff LS Cloud Storage Technologies, LLC filed its complaint for patent infringement against Amazon in the Waco Division of the Western District of Texas. Plaintiff accused multiple Amazon products, such as AWS and Amazon EBS, of infringing patents generally relating to data storage and remote storage systems. On June 16, 2022, Amazon moved to dismiss LS Cloud’s claims. While the Motion was pending, Judge Albright granted the parties’ joint motion to transfer to the Austin Division.

On October 21, 2022, Judge Albright denied Defendant Resideo Technologies, Inc.’s (“Resideo”) Motion to Transfer Venue from the Western District of Texas (“Western District”) to the District of Minnesota.

On August 4, 2022, Judge Albright granted stay pending resolution of the inter partes review in the case of Sonrai Memory Limited v. Western Digital Technologies, Inc. This action alleges that Western Digital Technologies, Inc. infringed three patents belonging to Sonrai Memory Limited.

As of July 25, 2022, any patent case filed in the Waco Division of the Western District of Texas will be randomly assigned to one of 12 judges in the Western District, including Judge Albright. This order changes prior practice in which patent cases filed in the Waco Division would be assigned to Judge Albright as a matter of course.

On March 2, 2021, the jury trial in VLSI Technology, LLC v. Intel Corporation concluded and found that Intel had literally infringed U.S. Patent No. 7,523,373 (’373 patent) and that infringed under the doctrine of equivalents U.S. Patent No. 7,725,759 (’759 patent)s. The jury awarded VLSI a lump sum of $1.5 billion for the infringement of the ’373 patent and a lump sum of $675 million for the infringement of the ’759 patent.

On April 12, 2022, in Ikorongo Technology LLC, et al. v. Bumble Trading LLC, Judge Albright granted Bumble’s motion for summary judgment of invalidity under 35 U.S.C. § 251, which contains the original patent requirement.

On December 6, 2021, in USC IP Partnerships, LP v. Facebook, Inc., Judge Albright granted Facebook’s motion for summary judgment on Section 101 grounds in what appears to be a first for the court. 

On September 30, 2021, Judge Albright denied Alfresco Software, Ltd.’s motion for transfer of venue under 28 U.S.C. 1404(a) in Open Text Corp. v. Alfresco Software, Ltd. The case will continue to be tried in the Western District of Texas before Judge Albright.

On May 20, 2021, Judge Alan Albright issued a written order granting plaintiff Performance Chemical Company’s (PCC) Motion for Sanctions for True Chem’s concealment of vital evidence. 

On Day 5, Intel rested its case-in-chief and VLSI delivered its rebuttal case.

Key takeaways from Judge Albright's second patent jury trial. 

Part two: Closing Arguments 

On day 5 of the jury trial in VLSI Technologies v. Intel, the defendant continued its case-in-chief.

The Federal Circuit doubles down on its Apple decision finding that “the district court’s handling of the transfer motion up until this point in the case has amounted to egregious delay and blatant disregard for precedent.”

In re: Intel Corporation, 2021-111

In May, Judge Albright orally denied Apple’s § 1404(a) motion to transfer the case filed by Uniloc to the Northern District of California. “After the hearing, but before issuing a written order, the court held a Markman hearing, issued its claim construction order, held a discovery hearing regarding the protective order in the case, and issued a corresponding discovery order.”

In this podcast, we discuss how Judge Albright recently revised the Order Governing Procedures (OGP) in his court, making changes in three primary areas.

Welcome to the inaugural episode of WacoWatch: The Podcast. In our first episode, WacoWatch contributors, DaWanna McCray and Danielle Williams, talk about their key takeaways for Judge Albright’s first patent jury trial, from the pre-trial motions through the verdict form.