N OTE : This o rder is non precedential.


# United States **Court of Appeals**  **for the Federal Circuit**

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IN RE CASHMAN EQUIPMENT CO MPANY, CATERPILLAR GLOBAL M INING, LLC, CATERPILLAR INC., RA PTOR MINING PRODUCTS (USA), INC.
, AND RAPTOR MINING PRODUCTS, INC.,
Petitioners.

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2014

- 154

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On Petition for Writ of Mandamus to th e United States District Court for the Central District of Illinois in
No. 1:13

- cv

- 1409, Judge Sara Darrow.

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ON PETITION

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Before N EWMAN
, D YK
, and H UGHES
, Circ uit Judge s.

D YK
, Circuit Judge

. O R D E R

Petitioners Cashman Equipment Company

, Caterpi llar Inc. et al.

, and Raptor Mining Products (USA), Inc. et al., defendants in the underlying patent infringement action, seek a writ of mandamus directing the United States District Court for the Central Distr ict of Illinois to reverse its order re

- transferring the case to the United Case: 14-154 Document: 25 Page: 1 Filed: 11/25/2014IN RE CASHMAN EQUIPMENT COMPANY 2

States District Court for the District of Nevada. R espondents ESCO Corp. and ESCO Canada, which brought suit against petitioners initially in the District of Nevada, oppose the pe tition.

ESCO Corp. and ESCO Canada design, manufacture, and sell mining, infrastructure, and industrial parts and tools

. Caterpillar Global Mining, LLC and Illinois

- based Caterpillar , Inc. manufacture , among other things, heavy equipment for u se in construction and mining. Raptor is a supplier of Caterpillar. Cashman, a Nevada corpor ation, sells Caterpillar products in Nevada and California.

Caterpillar filed suit in the Central District of Illi nois

, seeking a declaration that its locking system p roduct did not infringe three of ESCO’s patents. ESCO then filed an infringement action in the District of Nevada. In addition to naming Caterpillar as a defendant, ESCO joined ESCO Canada as a plaintiff, which in turn

, claimed infring ement of one of its own patents. ESCO also named Raptor and Cashman as defendant s. The actions were consol idated , and the Nevada court transferred to Illinois.

In its transfer order here on review , the Central Di strict of Illinois held that , because it would have lacked personal jurisdiction over Cashman at the tim e ESCO filed its complaint, the District of Nevada had erred in concluding that ESCO’s action was one that “might have been brought” in t he Central District of Illinois under 28 U.S.C. § 1404(a)

. In so doing, the court determined that it was unable to find Cashman had continuous and syste matic contacts with Illinois to warrant general jurisdiction.

The court further concluded that it lacked specific j urisdiction over Cashman . T he court explained that Cashman had only sold the accused products in Nevada and California. The court recognized that Cashman had been accused of procuring the accused products from Caterpillar’s ware houses and offices in Illinois. But it found that was insufficient to establish juri sdiction beCase: 14-154 Document: 25 Page: 2 Filed: 11/25/2014IN RE CASHMAN EQUIPMENT COMPANY 3

cause such purchase was not the reason Cashman was subjected to claims of infringement.

Because transferring the case back to Nevada was the

on ly way to adjudicate the related consolidated cases together , the court granted respondents’ mot ion. Before this court, petitioners argue that the Illinois court in fact has jurisdiction over Cashman and therefore erred in failing to consider its allegations of forum shopping and whether the Central District of Illinois would be more
convenient to t ry the consolidated cases.

The remedy of mandamus is available only in e xtraordinary situations to correct a clear abuse of discr etion or usurpation of judicial power. In re Calmar, Inc., 854 F.2d 461, 464 (Fed. Cir. 1988). That standard is an exacting one, requiring the petitioner to establish that the district court’s decision was so clearly incorrect that it amounted to a patently erroneous result

. See In re Vistaprint Ltd. , 628 F.3d 1342, 1347 (Fed. Cir. 2010). No such abuse occurred in this case.

To begin with, we agree that the consent of petitioners alone was insufficient to justify the Nevada court’s initial transfer of the cases to Illinois

. Indeed, t he Supreme Court has made clear that “the power of a District Court under § 1404(a) to transfer . . . [does not] depend not upon the wish or waiver of the defendant but, rather, upon whether the transferee district was one in which the action ‘might have been brought’ by the plaintiff. ” Hoffman v. Blaski , 363 U.S. 335, 34 3-44 (1960).

Like wise, we agree with the district court that pet itioners have not shown that this case falls within the exception that allows for transfer “to any district or division to which all parties have consented.” § 1404(a). Though Caterpillar, Cashman, and Rapto r may have consented to jurisdiction in Illinois, the ESCO plaintiffs, who moved for the transfer to Nevada and opposed tran sfer from Nevada to Illinois, have not

. Case: 14-154 Document: 25 Page: 3 Filed: 11/25/2014IN RE CASHMAN EQUIPMENT COMPANY 4

T he district court, moreover, did not clearly err in concluding that petitioners have not established general jurisdiction over Cashman in the Illinois court. The activity that petitioners identified for establishing general jurisdictio n in Illinois

— communicating with Caterpillar employees

, purchasing equipment from Caterpillar in Illinois, and occasionally sending employees for train in g and dealer meetings in Illinois

— was deemed insufficient by the Supreme Court in Helicopteros Nacionales de Colombia, S.A. v. Hall , 466 U.S. 408, 416

- 18 (1984).

The district court further concluded that the cla ims against Cashman did not “‘aris[e] out of’ and ‘relat[e] to’ the defendant’s alleged manufacturing, using, or s elling of
the claimed invention ” in Illinois. Avocent Huntsville Corp. v. Aten Int’l Co., Ltd. , 552 F.3d 1324, 1332 (Fed. Cir. 2008). It may well be that the district court was correct in distinguishing , for purposes of specific jurisdiction, between selling in Illinois and procuring the accused pro ducts in Illinois for sale elsewhere. We need not decide, and express no view, on that conclusion , f or we are sati sfied that the court’s conclusion, at a minimum, was not a clear abuse of discretion or usurpation of power.

Petitioners make much out of the fact that Caterpillar filed its action in the Central District of Illinois before ES CO and that its contacts in that district make it pe rhaps more convenient for trial. But because they did not satisfy the threshold question in a transfer decision of whether the case “ might have been brought” in Illinois, the district court did not abuse its discretion in failing to
address those arguments

. We therefore deny their pet ition.

Accordingly,

I T I S O RDERED T HAT :
The petition for writ of mandamus is denied. Case: 14-154 Document: 25 Page: 4 Filed: 11/25/2014IN RE CASHMAN EQUIPMENT COMPANY 5

F OR THE C OURT

/s/ Daniel E. O’Toole Daniel E. O’Toole Clerk of Court

s24 Case: 14-154 Document: 25 Page: 5 Filed: 11/25/2014