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I. Introduction
For most companies, being sued is stressful enough — but where the lawsuit lands can shape the odds. In patent cases, a federal statute written specifically for patent disputes dictates which courthouses around the country are fair game, and for years patent owners raced to file in a handful of districts perceived as favorable to their side, most famously a stretch of East Texas. A 2017 Supreme Court decision attempted to rein that in, limiting patent suits to places where a company is truly “at home” or genuinely does business. Yet in an economy where employees work from their kitchen tables, data lives on servers scattered across the country, and a storefront can shrink to a kiosk in a shopping mall, courts are now wrestling with a deceptively simple question: what counts as a company’s “place of business”? The answer shapes where a business can be hauled into court, how much leverage the other side holds before the dispute even begins, and what defending the suit may cost — from travel and local counsel to the pace of the docket and the jury pool it will face.
The rules that inform that question come from a specialized federal statute, 28 U.S.C. § 1400(b), and a line of recent appellate decisions interpreting it. Together they tell a company two things: it can be sued for patent infringement only where it is incorporated, or where it both allegedly infringed and maintains a genuine, established business presence. The first half is straightforward. The second — what makes a business presence “genuine” and “established” — is where remote work and modern technology have made the analysis difficult. It is also where the most consequential recent disputes have unfolded, many of them in the Eastern District of Texas. This article reviews the governing framework, surveys how courts have applied it to contemporary fact patterns, and offers practical considerations for companies and patent owners.
II. How Patent Venue Works
A. A Specialized Venue Statute
Venue determines which federal district courts may hear a case. In most civil litigation, venue is broad, generally reaching any district with personal jurisdiction over the defendant.1 Patent cases are different. A specialized statute, 28 U.S.C. § 1400(b), provides that a patent infringement suit may be brought only in the judicial district where the defendant resides, or where the defendant has committed acts of infringement and has a regular and established place of business.2 For years, courts read the first option broadly, letting patent owners concentrate cases in a few districts perceived as favorable to them.
B. TC Heartland Narrows "Residence"
The Supreme Court curtailed that practice in 2017. In TC Heartland LLC v. Kraft Foods Group Brands LLC, the Court held that, for purposes of the patent venue statute, a domestic corporation “resides” only in its state of incorporation.3 That ruling sharply limited the residence option and shifted the litigation spotlight to the statute’s other path to venue — the “regular and established place of business.”
C. The In re Cray Test
A few months later, the Federal Circuit supplied the governing test. In In re Cray Inc., the court held that a “regular and established place of business” must satisfy three requirements: there must be (1) a physical place in the district, (2) that is regular and established, and (3) that is the place of the defendant.4 A “place” means a physical, geographic location from which business is carried out — a building or part of a building — not a merely virtual or electronic presence.5 “Regular and established” requires steady, continuous activity with a degree of permanence, rather than sporadic or transient contacts.6 And the place must belong to the defendant: the defendant must own, lease, or otherwise establish or ratify it as its own, for example by holding it out as a business location.7 Two additional principles complete the framework. The plaintiff, not the defendant, bears the burden of establishing that venue is proper.8 And the Federal Circuit has since held that a place of business generally requires the regular, physical presence of an employee or other agent of the defendant conducting the defendant’s business there.9
III. Applying the Test to Modern Fact Patterns
A. Remote and Work-From-Home Employees
Cray itself arose from remote work. The defendant, a supercomputer maker incorporated in Washington, allowed two employees — including a sales executive responsible for substantial revenue — to work from their homes in the Eastern District of Texas.10 The Federal Circuit found no regular and established place of business. The homes belonged to the employees; the company paid no rent, stored no inventory or product literature there, and did not regard the location as important to the work performed.11 Critically, the employee could move out of the district without the company’s approval, and nothing would tie the company to the district if he did.12 The facts, the court concluded, showed only a location where an employee carried on work for his employer — which does not establish a place of the defendant.13
Later decisions illustrate when remote work can cross the line, frequently turning on whether the in-district presence is truly optional or effectively required. Courts have been more receptive to venue where a company requires or strongly prefers that employees live in a given territory, finances or controls the workspace, stores inventory or equipment in employees’ homes for use in the district, or operates on an all-remote model. In RegenLab USA LLC v. Estar Technologies, Ltd., for example, a court found venue proper where the defendant’s workforce was entirely remote and employees stored inventory at home to conduct product demonstrations within the district.14
The most closely watched recent case left the question open. In In re Monolithic Power Systems, Inc., a Delaware corporation contested venue in the Western District of Texas, where four remote employees worked from home, kept company lab equipment used to serve local customers, and where the company advertised to fill in-district roles as employees departed.15 The district court found venue proper. On a petition for mandamus, the Federal Circuit declined to disturb that ruling, but expressly did not decide the merits — explaining that whether a remote employee’s home may be attributed to the employer is not settled enough to justify the extraordinary remedy of mandamus.16 A dissent would have found venue improper as materially indistinguishable from Cray.17 For companies, the practical point is that the boundary between optional and required remote presence remains contested and intensely fact-specific.
B. Servers, Data Centers, and Equipment
When the alleged place of business is equipment rather than a person, the analysis turns on the employee-or-agent requirement. In In re Google LLC, the patent owner relied on Google cache servers located within the district at independent internet service providers’ facilities.18 The Federal Circuit agreed that a server — like leased shelf or rack space — can be a “place” under the first Cray requirement.19 But it held that a regular and established place of business requires the regular, physical presence of the defendant’s employee or agent conducting its business at the place, and that the ISPs hosting and maintaining the servers were not Google’s agents; because no Google employee or agent regularly worked there, venue failed.20
That holding displaced a broader approach. In SEVEN Networks, LLC v. Google LLC, the Eastern District of Texas had concluded that Google’s in-district servers were themselves sufficient to establish venue.21 In re Google foreclosed that theory, though it left open whether, and under what circumstances, a machine might qualify as a defendant’s in-district agent.22 District courts continue to apply the employee-or-agent requirement to attenuated technological ties; one 2024 Eastern District of Texas decision, for instance, found a defendant’s gift-card sales and cloud servers in the district too attenuated to support venue.23
C. Retail Footholds: Kiosks, Shelves, and Consignment Space
The same requirements govern a physical retail foothold, such as a kiosk inside a larger store or mall, a slice of shelf space, or consigned inventory. Because leased shelf or rack space can be a “place,”24 a kiosk’s footprint will often satisfy the first requirement; the harder questions are the second and third. A kiosk staffed by the defendant’s own employee most closely resembles a traditional place of business and presents the strongest case for venue. A fully automated or unattended kiosk faces the same obstacle as Google’s servers — the absence of a person regularly conducting the company’s business there.25 And a kiosk operated by a third party raises the agency question discussed below. The Federal Circuit has not squarely addressed a retail-kiosk fact pattern, so the analysis proceeds by applying these settled requirements. Older authority on consigned inventory remains instructive: in In re Cordis Corp., the relevant question was whether the defendant conducted business in the district through a permanent and continuous presence, not whether it maintained a formal office or store.26
D. Third-Party and Agency Relationships
Many companies reach a district only through independent distributors, dealers, contractors, or service providers, and whether such a relationship creates venue depends on agency law. In In re Volkswagen Group of America, Inc., and a companion case involving Hyundai, automakers were sued in the Western District of Texas based on independently owned dealerships that sold and serviced their vehicles.27 The Federal Circuit held that the dealerships were not the automakers’ regular and established places of business. Ordinary franchise terms did not make the dealers the manufacturers’ agents; an agency relationship for venue purposes requires that the defendant have interim control over the relevant activities — the right to give interim instructions — which the automakers lacked once their vehicles left their hands. And even a qualifying agency relationship does not by itself establish venue: the patent owner must show that the defendant actually conducts its business from the agent’s location.28 The same control-and-ratification analysis governs theories based on contractors who perform maintenance, installation, or customer support in a district: the question is whether the defendant has established or ratified the in-district place as its own and exercises the requisite control.29
IV. The Eastern District of Texas and the Broader Venue Map
Many of these decisions trace to a single region. The Eastern District of Texas has long ranked among the most active patent forums in the country, and several leading venue rulings — including Cray and In re Google — arose from efforts to keep cases there.30 The district’s heavy patent docket has repeatedly drawn Federal Circuit review, frequently by mandamus.
TC Heartland reshaped the broader map. Because corporations now reside only where incorporated, the District of Delaware — the state of incorporation for a large share of U.S. companies — became a natural venue, as did a company’s actual operational home, such as the Northern District of California for many technology firms.31 At the same time, the Western District of Texas, and particularly its Waco division, emerged as a major patent forum; several recent place-of-business disputes, including Monolithic Power and Volkswagen, arose there.32 A related venue question — how much in-district activity counts as an “act of infringement,” particularly for method claims carried out across distributed systems — also remains unsettled; the Federal Circuit declined to resolve it on mandamus in late 2025.33 For companies, the lesson is that no single district dominates the venue map as it once did, and that incorporation choices and physical footprint now largely determine where a company can be sued.
V. Takeaways and Practice Tips
The venue analysis is fact-intensive, but several practical points emerge.
A. For companies seeking to manage exposure:
- Treat remote work as genuinely employee-elected where feasible. Records showing that employees choose their own locations, are not required to live in a particular district, and may relocate without approval support the position that their homes are not the company’s place of business.34
- Keep core functions and inventory out of employees’ homes. Storing company equipment or product inventory in a residence for use in the district, or routing essential operations through it, can weigh in favor of venue.35
- Attend to control terms in third-party arrangements. Distributor, dealer, and service agreements that confer interim control over in-district activities can create venue exposure under an agency theory — a trade-off worth weighing when structuring those relationships.36
B. For patent owners:
- Invest in targeted venue discovery. Because the plaintiff bears the burden, early discovery into a defendant’s physical presence, in-district equipment or inventory, and degree of control over local agents can be decisive.37
C. On procedure:
- Raise venue early. A defendant that believes venue is improper should move promptly to dismiss or transfer; and while mandamus is available, the Federal Circuit grants it sparingly, as the recent decisions show.38
As work disperses and commerce migrates online, what counts as a company’s “place of business” will keep returning to the courts. The governing requirements are clear even where their application is not: a physical place, regular and established, that is genuinely the defendant’s — and, ordinarily, one where someone is conducting the company’s business.
Footnotes
1. See 28 U.S.C. § 1391(b)–(c).
2. 28 U.S.C. § 1400(b).
3. TC Heartland LLC v. Kraft Foods Grp. Brands LLC, 581 U.S. 258, 262 (2017).
4. In re Cray Inc., 871 F.3d 1355, 1360 (Fed. Cir. 2017).
5. Id. at 1362.
6. Id. at 1362–63.
7. Id. at 1363.
8. In re ZTE (USA) Inc., 890 F.3d 1008, 1013–14 (Fed. Cir. 2018).
9. In re Google LLC, 949 F.3d 1338, 1343–45 (Fed. Cir. 2020).
10. In re Cray, 871 F.3d at 1357–58.
11. Id. at 1365–66.
12. Id. at 1365.
13. Id. at 1366.
14. RegenLab USA LLC v. Estar Techs., Ltd., 335 F. Supp. 3d 526, 549–53 (S.D.N.Y. 2018).
15. In re Monolithic Power Sys., Inc., 50 F.4th 157, 159–60 (Fed. Cir. 2022).
16. Id. at 160–61.
17. Id. (Lourie, J., dissenting).
18. In re Google, 949 F.3d at 1340.
19. Id. at 1343.
20. Id. at 1343–47.
21. SEVEN Networks, LLC v. Google LLC, 315 F. Supp. 3d 933, 951–52 (E.D. Tex. 2018).
22. In re Google, 949 F.3d at 1347.
23. Quantum Tech. Innovations, LLC v. Valve Corp., No. 2:23-CV-425-JRG-RSP, 2024 WL 4329020 (E.D. Tex. Aug. 8, 2024) (report & recommendation).
24. In re Google, 949 F.3d at 1343.
25. Id. at 1343–47.
26. In re Cordis Corp., 769 F.2d 733, 737 (Fed. Cir. 1985).
27. In re Volkswagen Grp. of Am., Inc., 28 F.4th 1203 (Fed. Cir. 2022).
28. Id. at 1207–08 (citing In re Google, 949 F.3d at 1345–46); see also Andra Grp., LP v. Victoria’s Secret Stores, L.L.C., 6 F.4th 1283, 1289 (Fed. Cir. 2021).
29. See In re Cray, 871 F.3d at 1363; In re Cordis, 769 F.2d at 737.
30. See In re Cray, 871 F.3d 1355; In re Google, 949 F.3d 1338.
31. See TC Heartland, 581 U.S. at 262.
32. See In re Monolithic Power Sys., 50 F.4th 157; In re Volkswagen, 28 F.4th 1203.
33. In re Comcast Cable Commc’ns, LLC, No. 2026-104, 2025 WL 3527410 (Fed. Cir. Dec. 9, 2025) (per curiam) (nonprecedential) (denying mandamus on the ground that an appeal after final judgment is an adequate alternative remedy, without deciding whether a defendant’s performance of a single step of a multi-step method claim within a district constitutes an “act of infringement” under 28 U.S.C. § 1400(b)), reh'g & reh'g en banc denied (Fed. Cir. Feb. 25, 2026).
34. See In re Cray, 871 F.3d at 1365–66.
35. See RegenLab, 335 F. Supp. 3d 526; In re Monolithic Power Sys., 50 F.4th 157.
36. See In re Volkswagen, 28 F.4th at 1207–08.
37. See In re ZTE, 890 F.3d at 1013–14; In re Cray, 871 F.3d at 1360.
38. See In re Monolithic Power Sys., 50 F.4th at 160–61.
The content of this article is intended to provide a general guide to the subject matter. Specialist advice should be sought about your specific circumstances.
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