In a recent memorandum opinion, Judge Sue L. Robinson denied a defendant’s motion to transfer to the Central District of California litigation involving a patented codec used for encoding video onto Blue-ray discs. FastVDO LLC v. Paramount Pictures Corp., Civ. No. 12-1427-SLR (D. Del. June 4, 2013). The plaintiff was a Florida limited liability company with headquarters in Florida, and was significantly smaller (with significantly less litigation experience) than the defendant, a Delaware corporation with its headquarters in California. Id. at 1, 4. The defendant argued that the allegedly infringing coding was performed by authoring houses operating primarily in California, but the Court disagreed, noting that the authoring houses were headquartered in California, but performed coding in facilities located in Indiana, Pennsylvania, and New York. Id. at 1. As a result, and combined with the fact that Blue-ray discs are sold across the country, the Court found that the alleged infringement did not occur principally in California. Id. at 4. The Court gave little weight to the defendant’s argument that the authoring houses’ documents would be outside the Court’s subpoena power, explaining that since “the authoring houses manufacture the Blue-ray discs at the behest of [defendant], it is unlikely they would refuse any reasonable request to produce information from their business partner in electronic format.” Id. at 5. The Court also found that while trial would be less expensive for the defendant in California, it would be more expensive for the plaintiff than litigating in Delaware. As a result, the Court explained that “[a]lthough Delaware is not the locus of any party’s business activities, it is a neutral forum and no more inconvenient for [defendant] than Florida, the locus of [plaintiff’s] business activities.” Id. at 6. All of this, combined with the fact that 24 other Blue-ray cases filed by the plaintiff were pending in Delaware, convinced the Court that transfer was not warranted. Id. at 7-8.
FastVDO LLC v. Paramount Pictures Corp., Civ. No. 12-1427-SLR (D. Del. June 4, 2013).
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