In the past year, the Federal Circuit has repeatedly required the Western District of Texas to transfer patent infringement suits from that district to more convenient venues, and in doing so it has provided increasingly specific—and often pointed—guidance to courts and litigants on the appropriate analysis for transfer motions.

For example, in the November 2020 ruling in In re Apple Inc., 979 F.3d 1332 (Fed. Cir. 2020), the Federal Circuit chastised the Western District for “barrel[ing] ahead” with the merits of a case while a transfer motion sat pending, and it issued a writ of mandamus requiring that the case be transferred to the Northern District of California. In In re TracFone Wireless, 852 F. App’x 537 (Fed. Cir. Apr. 20, 2021), the court again identified several errors in the district court’s analysis and ordered a transfer.