United States Court of Appeals 

for the Federal Circuit ______________________

IN RE: MONOLITHIC POWER SYSTEMS, INC.,

Petitioner

______________________

2022-153

______________________

On Petition for Writ of Mandamus to the United States 

District Court for the Western District of Texas in No. 6:21-

cv-00655-ADA, Judge Alan D. Albright.

______________________

ON PETITION

______________________

DEANNE MAYNARD, Morrison & Foerster LLP, Washington, DC, for petitioner. Also represented by SETH W.

LLOYD; WEIZHI STELLA MAO, BRYAN J. WILSON, Palo Alto, 

CA; DIEK VAN NORT, San Francisco, CA.

 CHRISTOPHER FERENC, Katten Muchin Rosenman LLP, 

Washington, DC, for respondent Bel Power Solutions Inc. 

Also represented by ANDREW JOHN PECORARO, ROBERT 

THOMAS SMITH; BRIAN SODIKOFF, Chicago, IL.

______________________

Before LOURIE, CHEN, and STARK, Circuit Judges.

Opinion for the court filed PER CURIAM.

Dissenting opinion filed by Circuit Judge LOURIE.

PER CURIAM.

Case: 22-153 Document: 24 Page: 1 Filed: 09/30/2022
2 IN RE: MONOLITHIC POWER SYSTEMS, INC.

O R D E R

Monolithic Power Systems, Inc. petitions for a writ of 

mandamus directing the United States District Court for 

the Western District of Texas to dismiss or transfer this 

case to the United States District Court for the Northern 

District of California. Bel Power Solutions Inc. opposes. 

For the following reasons, we deny the petition.

I.

Bel Power brought this suit alleging that Monolithic infringes Bel Power’s patents by selling certain power modules to original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) and 

other distributors and customers that use the products in

their own electronic devices. Monolithic moved to dismiss 

or transfer for lack of venue under 28 U.S.C. § 1406(a) and 

Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 12(b)(3), arguing that, as a 

Delaware corporation, it does not “reside” in the Western 

District within the meaning of 28 U.S.C. § 1400(b); that it 

does not own or lease any property in that district; and that 

the homes of four fulltime remote employees in the Western District identified in the complaint to support venue do

not constitute a “regular and established place of business” 

of Monolithic. Monolithic alternatively moved to transfer 

under 28 U.S.C. § 1404(a) to the Northern District of California. 

The district court denied both requests. The court first 

rejected Monolithic’s improper venue challenge, finding 

Monolithic viewed maintaining a business presence in the 

Western District as important, as evidenced by a history of 

soliciting employment in Austin to support local OEM customers, even if none of its Western District employees were 

required to reside there. The court also found significant 

that Monolithic provided certain employees in the Western 

District with lab equipment or products to be used in or 

distributed from their homes as part of their responsibilities. Based on those findings, the court concluded that the

circumstances surrounding venue here were

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IN RE: MONOLITHIC POWER SYSTEMS, INC. 3

distinguishable from In re Cray Inc., 871 F.3d 1355 (Fed. 

Cir. 2017), and more similar to circumstances that another 

district court in RegenLab USA LLC v. Estar Technologies 

Ltd., 335 F. Supp. 3d 526 (S.D.N.Y. 2018), found sufficient 

to support venue. 

Having concluded that venue over Monolithic in the

Western District was proper, the court then analyzed 

whether the convenience of parties and witnesses and the 

interests of justice weighed in favor of transfer, following 

the multi-factor approach adopted by the United States 

Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit in In re Volkswagen 

of America, Inc., 545 F.3d 304, 310 (5th Cir. 2008) 

(en banc). After considering those factors, the court determined that Monolithic had failed to demonstrate that the 

Northern District of California was clearly more convenient than the Western District and thus denied transfer.

Monolithic then filed this petition challenging the 

court’s determination that the Western District is a proper 

venue under § 1400(b) based on its employees’ homes. 

Monolithic also contends that the district court clearly 

abused its discretion in its assessment of the relevant 

transfer factors under § 1404(a). We have jurisdiction under 28 U.S.C. §§ 1651(a) and 1295(a)(1).

II.

Under the All Writs Act, federal courts “may issue all 

writs necessary or appropriate in aid of their respective jurisdictions and agreeable to the usages and principles of 

law.” 28 U.S.C. § 1651(a). Before a court may issue the 

writ, three conditions must be satisfied: (1) the petitioner 

must have “no other adequate means to attain the relief he 

desires”; (2) the petitioner must show that the right to the 

writ is “clear and indisputable”; and (3) the court “in the 

exercise of its discretion, must be satisfied that the writ is 

appropriate under the circumstances.” Cheney v. U.S. Dist. 

Ct. for D.C., 542 U.S. 367, 380–81 (2004) (citations and 

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4 IN RE: MONOLITHIC POWER SYSTEMS, INC.

internal quotation marks omitted). Monolithic has not met 

these requirements with respect to either of its challenges.

A

As to the district court’s refusal to dismiss or transfer 

for improper patent venue, “[o]rdinarily, mandamus relief 

is not available for rulings on [improper venue] motions under 28 U.S.C. § 1406(a)” because post-judgment appeal is 

often an adequate alternative means for attaining relief. 

In re Volkswagen Grp. of Am., Inc., 28 F.4th 1203, 1207 

(Fed. Cir. 2022) (citing In re HTC Corp., 889 F.3d 1349, 

1352–53 (Fed. Cir. 2018)). We have found mandamus to be 

available for alleged § 1400(b) violations where immediate 

intervention is necessary to assure proper judicial administration. See, e.g., In re ZTE (USA) Inc., 890 F.3d 1008, 

1011 (Fed. Cir. 2018); In re BigCommerce, Inc., 890 F.3d 

978, 981 (Fed. Cir. 2018); In re Micron Tech., Inc., 875 F.3d 

1091, 1095 (Fed. Cir. 2017); Cray, 871 F.3d at 1360. But 

Monolithic has not shown that mandamus is necessary for 

this purpose here.

We are not persuaded that the district court’s venue

ruling implicates a “basic, unsettled, recurring legal issue[]

over which there is considerable litigation producing disparate results,” or similar circumstances that might warrant mandamus. Micron, 875 F.3d at 1095. The court

analyzed Monolithic’s arguments under the factors established in Cray for determining whether, for purposes of 

venue, a defendant has sufficiently ratified a place of business to make it its own. And it did so based on the specific 

circumstances surrounding Monolithic’s history of soliciting employees to work in the Western District to support

Monolithic’s local OEM customers in that district and the 

extent and type of laboratory equipment and product maintained in the homes of those employees. 

Among other things, the court noted that one employee, 

Jason Bone, “possesses a fair amount of Monolithic’s equipment, including two oscilloscopes, four to five power 

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IN RE: MONOLITHIC POWER SYSTEMS, INC. 5

supplies, two electric loads, a logic analyzer, a soldering 

iron, a multimeter, a function generator, three to five samples of microcontrollers, MOSFETs, five op-amps, ten to fifteen comparators, twenty inductors, and fifty sample 

demonstration boards.” Appx6. And Monolithic provided 

that equipment, “which is not typically found in a generic 

home office,” for “the sole purpose of allowing Mr. Bone to 

conduct testing and validation as part of his job.” Id. Specifically, Mr. Bone uses these in-home tools and equipment 

to conduct validation tests for at least one of Monolithic’s 

in-district customers. See Appx734 (cited by Pet. at 15); cf.

In re Cordis Corp., 769 F.2d 733, 735, 737 (Fed. Cir. 1985) 

(finding venue proper in district where defendant’s employees stored defendant’s “literature, documents and products” in their in-district homes rather than in a separately 

leased or owned warehouse of the defendant); Celgene 

Corp. v. Mylan Pharms. Inc., 17 F. 4th 1111, 1124 (Fed. Cir. 

2021) (finding venue improper where defendant’s employees chose to rent storage lockers to store defendant’s product samples with no evidence that defendant “established 

or ratified” said lockers).1 In this case, there is some “evidence that the employees’ location” in the district “was material to” Monolithic. Cf. Cray, 871 F.3d at 1365.

The dissent may well be correct that the issue of imputing employee homes to a defendant for purposes of venue 

will become an issue of greater concern given the shift to 

1 Monolithic emphasizes the lack of evidence that its 

four employees in the Western District of Texas work with 

the products accused of infringement in this case. See, e.g., 

Pet. Br. at 14–16; Pet. Reply. at 2–5. We have held, however, that § 1400(b) does not require a causal relationship 

between a defendant’s regular and established place of 

business and the acts of infringement. See In re Google, 

No. 2018-152, 2018 WL 5536478, at *3 (Fed. Cir. Oct. 29, 

2018). 

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6 IN RE: MONOLITHIC POWER SYSTEMS, INC.

remote work. But, in our view, at present, the district 

court’s ruling does not involve the type of broad, fundamental, and recurring legal question or usurpation of judicial 

power that might warrant immediate mandamus review. 

As we have stated: “Not all circumstances in which a defendant will be forced to undergo the cost of discovery and 

trial warrant mandamus[ because t]o issue a writ solely for 

those reasons would clearly undermine the rare nature of 

its form of relief and make a large class of interlocutory orders routinely reviewable.” In re BP Lubricants USA Inc., 

637 F.3d 1307, 1313 (Fed. Cir. 2011); cf. La Buy v. Howes 

Leather Co., 352 U.S. 249, 259 (1957) (explaining that “trial 

before a regular, experienced trial judge rather than before 

a temporary substitute appointed on an ad hoc basis and 

ordinarily not experienced in judicial work” was an example of “impelling reason for” mandamus relief). As is evident from other venue cases, the nature of the work that 

employees perform from their homes on behalf of their employers is varied. And given the nature of Mr. Bone’s work 

in particular, it appears that this case may present an idiosyncratic set of facts. For us to be regularly drawn into 

such fact-laden disputes, presented at the outset of a case, 

often before much can be reasonably predicted about how a 

case will proceed and whether trial is a reasonable prospect, would be inconsistent with the limited nature of the 

writ of mandamus. See generally Cray, 871 F.3d at 1362 

(“In deciding whether a defendant has a regular and established place of business in a district, no precise rule has 

been laid down and each case depends on its own facts.”); 

id. at 1366 (“We stress that no one fact is controlling.”). 

Thus, we conclude that Monolithic has not demonstrated 

the type of concerns that we have relied on when granting 

immediate mandamus review. Compare In re Google LLC, 

No. 2018-152, 2018 WL 5536478, at *2–*3 (Fed. Cir. Oct. 

29, 2018) (denying mandamus for a venue challenge to allow the issue to percolate in the district courts so as to more 

clearly define the importance, scope, and nature of the issues for us to review), with In re Google LLC, 949 F.3d 

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IN RE: MONOLITHIC POWER SYSTEMS, INC. 7

1338, 1342–43 (Fed. Cir. 2020) (granting mandamus for a 

similar challenge after a “significant number of district 

court decisions that adopt[ed] conflicting views” “crystallized and brought clarity to the issues”). 

We conclude that Monolithic has not shown a clear and 

indisputable right to mandamus relief on its improper 

venue challenge, so we do not reach the merits of that challenge. Thus, our conclusion should necessarily not be interpreted as a disagreement with the dissent’s analysis of 

the ultimate merits of the venue issue.

B

Monolithic also challenges the district court’s decision 

to deny transfer under § 1404(a), which we review under 

regional-circuit law. See In re Samsung Elecs. Co., 2 F.4th 

1371, 1375 (Fed. Cir. 2021). Our task on mandamus is limited to seeing if there was such a clear abuse of discretion 

that refusing transfer amounted to a patently erroneous 

result. See In re TS Tech USA Corp., 551 F.3d 1315, 1319

(Fed. Cir. 2008). We cannot say that such a clear abuse of 

discretion occurred here. The district court reviewed and 

weighed all of the relevant factors. The court found, among 

other things, that the locus of events giving rise to this suit 

largely took place outside of the transferee venue and that 

the Texas forum, where several of Monolithic’s customers 

are located, could more easily access relevant information 

pertaining to induced and contributory infringement and 

could compel several potential third-party witnesses. The 

court weighed these and other administrative factors 

against two willing witnesses within the transferee forum 

favoring transfer and determined that Monolithic had not 

demonstrated that the transferee form was clearly more 

convenient. This is not a case in which there is “only one 

correct outcome.” In re Vistaprint Ltd., 628 F.3d 1342, 

1344, 1347 (Fed. Cir. 2010). Mindful of the standard of review, we are not prepared to say Monolithic has shown a 

Case: 22-153 Document: 24 Page: 7 Filed: 09/30/2022
8 IN RE: MONOLITHIC POWER SYSTEMS, INC. 

clear right to disturb those findings under the circumstances of this case. 

Accordingly,

 IT IS ORDERED THAT: 

The petition is denied. 

September 30, 2022

 Date

FOR THE COURT

/s/ Peter R. Marksteiner

Peter R. Marksteiner

Clerk of Court

Case: 22-153 Document: 24 Page: 8 Filed: 09/30/2022
United States Court of Appeals 

for the Federal Circuit ______________________

IN RE: MONOLITHIC POWER SYSTEMS, INC.,

Petitioner

______________________

2022-153

______________________

On Petition for Writ of Mandamus to the United States 

District Court for the Western District of Texas in No. 6:21-

cv-00655-ADA, Judge Alan D. Albright.

______________________

LOURIE, Circuit Judge, dissenting.

I respectfully dissent from the majority’s decision to 

deny mandamus. In my view, it is clear that venue is improper in the Western District of Texas because Monolithic 

Power Systems, Inc. does not “reside[]” there and the 

homes of Monolithic’s four employees in the Western District do not constitute Monolithic’s “regular and established place of business.” 28 U.S.C. § 1400(b). Indeed, we 

held venue to be improper under materially similar circumstances in In re Cray Inc., 871 F.3d 1355 (Fed. Cir. 2017) 

and Celgene Corp. v. Mylan Pharms. Inc., 17 F.4th 1111 

(Fed. Cir. 2021). As in those cases, the facts here “merely 

show that there exists within the district a physical location where . . . employee[s] of the defendant carr[y] on certain work for [their] employer,” which is insufficient under 

§ 1400(b). Cray, 871 F.3d at 1366.

Most basically, Monolithic lacks a regular and established place of business in the Western District of Texas, as 

the statute requires in order for it to be sued there. All else 

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2 IN RE: MONOLITHIC POWER SYSTEMS, INC.

in this case relates to the not-infrequent attempt to skirt 

around the statute to sue out-of-state defendants. And, in 

my view, we should not stand back and let the requirements of the statute be eroded by the details of what an 

employee stores in his or her home, even if the legal issue 

on appeal relates to the demanding requirements of mandamus. Reviewability on appeal does not provide adequate 

remedy for mistaken denials of mandamus, as the judicial 

system should not be stressed by having cases tried in venues not permitted by statute, and then retried as they 

should have been in a proper venue. Finally, our mention 

of “ratification” in Cray of an employee’s home as a defendant’s regular and established place of business, in the interest of completeness, was not meant to be a leaky sieve 

to accommodate avoidance of the basic requirements of the 

statute. 

Regarding specifics, which of course are what any case 

rests on, Monolithic does not own, lease, or exercise control 

over any portion of the homes of the employees; does not 

require these four employees to (continue to) reside in the 

Western District of Texas as a condition of their employment; and does not list or advertise their homes as places 

of business. For those reasons, we held that the defendants 

in Cray and Celgene did not “establish or ratify” the in-district homes of their employees as defendants’ place of business. Celgene, 17 F.4th at 1122 (quoting Cray, 871 F.3d at 

1363). The fact that the defendants in Celgene posted ads 

asking job candidates to live in, or within reasonable driving distance of, the district and that some employees rented 

lockers to store product samples in the district were insufficient to establish venue. 17 F.4th at 1123–24. 

The circumstances of job advertisement and storage of 

product and equipment relied on by the district court for 

finding venue here are not meaningfully distinguishable 

from those in Celgene. In Celgene, we found significant 

that there was “no requirement [that the employee] actually live in” the district and no “restriction on moving out 

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IN RE: MONOLITHIC POWER SYSTEMS, INC. 3

of state once there.” Id. at 1123. The same is true in this 

case. Celgene also rejected relying on the storage of product 

samples where there was “no evidence that [either defendant] requires its employees to store materials anywhere in” 

the district, no evidence that storing the product was “anything but the employees’ choice,” and no evidence that the 

defendant controlled or possessed where and how the product was stored. Id. at 1124. The reasons for finding venue 

to be improper in Celgene apply equally here, even though 

this case also involves laboratory equipment. As with the 

defendants in Celgene, there is no evidence that Monolithic 

requires Mr. Bone or other employees to maintain equipment at their houses in the Western District of Texas. 

The district court further erred by not considering “the 

nature and activity of the alleged place of business of the 

defendant in the district in comparison with that of other 

places of business of the defendant in other venues.” Cray, 

871 F.3d at 1364. In contrast to the handful of employees 

in the Western District of Texas at issue here who work 

from home, Monolithic maintains three regional headquarters in other venues. Pet. at 16 (citing Appx693). This 

clearly does not reflect “a business model” of using employees’ homes as a place of business that we indicated in Cray, 

871 F.3d at 1364 n.*, might support venue.

I appreciate the majority’s concern over addressing this 

issue on mandamus, given Monolithic’s ability to reraise its 

challenge after final judgment. However, consistent with 

the use of mandamus to ensure “proper judicial administration,” La Buy v. Howes Leather Co., 352 U.S. 249, 259–

60 (1957); In re Micron Tech., Inc., 875 F.3d 1091 (Fed. Cir. 

2017), I believe the majority here erred in finding that immediate review is unwarranted. The district court’s erroneous ruling threatens to bring confusion to the law

relating to where a patent infringement suit can properly 

be brought based on the location of employee homes and to 

erode the clear statutory requirement of a regular and established place of business. Given the increased 

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4 IN RE: MONOLITHIC POWER SYSTEMS, INC.

prevalence of remote work, I think immediate review by 

way of mandamus would be important to maintain uniformity of the court’s clear precedent. 

For those reasons, I respectfully dissent.

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