Nevertheless, patent plaintiffs just keep filing cases in Marshall and Tyler, Tx., and pulling all sorts of maneuvers to make it seem as though they have business connections to that out-of-the-way region of the country. A company called Allvoice Developments is a good case in point. Allvoice operates its voice-recognition patent licensing business from the United Kingdom, where the inventor of its key patent lives. It also, however, has an office in Tyler. And 16 days before Allvoice filed an infringement suit against Microsoft in 2009, the company incorporated under the laws of Texas.
For Tyler federal district court judge Leonard Davis, those were reasons enough to deny Microsoft’s motion to transfer Allvoice’s case out of East Texas. (Microsoft’s lawyers at Weil, Gotshal & Manges proposed two alternative venues: the Western District of Washington, where most of Microsoft’s witnesses are located; or the Southern District of Texas, where a previous suit involving the same Allvoice patent was litigated.) Last April, Judge Davis adopted the findings of federal magistrate judge John Love, ruling that the case could stay in Tyler.
