NOTE: This order is nonprecedential.

United States Court of Appeals 

for the Federal Circuit ______________________

In re: UBER TECHNOLOGIES, INC.,

Petitioner

______________________

2021-150

______________________

On Petition for Writ of Mandamus to the United States 

District Court for the Western District of Texas in No. 6:20-

cv-00843-ADA, Judge Alan D. Albright.

______________________

ON PETITION

______________________

Before LOURIE, DYK, and REYNA, Circuit Judges.

DYK, Circuit Judge.

O R D E R

In this patent infringement case brought by Ikorongo 

Technology LLC and Ikorongo Texas LLC (collectively,

“Ikorongo”), the United States District Court for the Western District of Texas denied Uber Technologies, Inc.’s motion to transfer to the United States District Court for the 

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

Uber seeks a writ of mandamus directing transfer. 

In its order denying transfer, the district court determined that Uber had failed to establish that this action 

“might have been brought” originally in Northern 

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2 IN RE: UBER TECHNOLOGIES, INC.

California as required under section 1404(a). Specifically, 

the district court found that the California forum would not 

be a proper venue under 28 U.S.C. § 1400(b) over Ikorongo 

Texas’s claims, which were limited to its geographic rights 

under the asserted patents to certain counties in Texas. In 

doing so, the district court rejected Uber’s argument that

Ikorongo Texas’s recent formation and acquisition of those 

specified rights from Ikorongo Tech (which shares offices in 

Northern California and the same ownership and management team as Ikorongo Texas) should be disregarded as

mere tactics to avoid transfer. In the alternative, the district court found that Uber had failed to show the Northern 

District of California was clearly more convenient for trial. 

We recently granted mandamus to direct the Western 

District of Texas to transfer to the Northern District of California two other actions of Ikorongo asserting infringement of two of the same patents against different

defendants. See In re Samsung Electronics Co., Nos. 2021-

139, -140, ___ F.4th __, 2021 WL 2672136 (Fed. Cir. June 

30, 2021). Samsung rejected the district court’s determination that Ikorongo’s actions could not have been brought 

in the transferee venue. Samsung observed that “the presence of Ikorongo Texas is plainly recent, ephemeral, and 

artificial” and “the sort of maneuver in anticipation of litigation that has been routinely rejected” by the Supreme 

Court and this court in related contexts. 2021 WL 

2672136, at *5–6. As a result, this court in Samsung held 

that it did not need to “consider separately Ikorongo 

Texas’s geographically bounded claims” for purposes of assessing whether the Northern District of California had 

venue over the case under section 1400(b). Id. 

The district court itself recognized “that the issues present here are identical to those” in Ikorongo’s other cases. 

Appx6. As in Samsung, the Western District of Texas erred

in this case in concluding that Uber had failed to satisfy 

the threshold requirement for transfer of venue. 

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IN RE: UBER TECHNOLOGIES, INC. 3

The district court’s analysis of the traditional public 

and private factors in this case is also virtually the same to 

its analysis in the cases in Samsung. As in this case, Samsung involved cases where the accused technology was researched, designed, and developed in the Northern District 

of California and the defendants identified several party 

and non-party witnesses, including two inventors, as residing in the Northern District of California, while no party 

identified a single witness as residing in or close to the 

Western District of Texas. Here, Uber is headquartered in 

the Northern District of California and below submitted a 

declaration identifying over a dozen witnesses residing in 

the transferee venue that were linked to the development 

of the accused technology. See Appx161–63.

In Samsung, we rejected the district court’s conclusion 

that the willing witness factor weighed only slightly in favor of transfer. See 2021 WL 2672136, at *6. We explained 

that the court had erroneously diminished the relative convenience of the Northern District of California by: (1) giving little weight to the presence of identified party 

witnesses in the Northern District of California despite no 

witness being identified in or near the Western District of 

Texas and (2) simply presuming that few, if any, party and 

non-party identified witnesses will likely testify at trial despite the defendants’ submitting evidence and argument to 

the contrary. Id. At the same time, Samsung rejected the

district court’s view that there was a strong public interest 

in retaining the case in the district based on Ikorongo’s 

other pending infringement action against Bumble Trading, LLC. Because “the Bumble case involves an entirely 

different underlying application,” we explained, it was unlikely the cases would result in inconsistent judgments. Id.

Samsung, moreover, explained that multidistrict litigation 

procedures could efficiently resolve overlapping invalidity 

or infringement issues. Id. Accordingly, we said that “the 

incremental gains in keeping these cases in the Western 

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4 IN RE: UBER TECHNOLOGIES, INC.

District of Texas simply are not sufficient to justify overriding the inconvenience to the parties and witnesses.” Id.

Samsung bolstered that conclusion by finding that 

other public interest considerations favored transfer. Specifically, we rejected the district court’s conclusion that the 

local interest factor was neutral despite the district court 

itself recognizing that the underlying accused functionality 

was researched, designed, and developed in the transferee 

venue. Id. at *7. We concluded that the district court had 

erred in minimizing that local interest in relying merely on 

the fact that Ikorongo Texas’s claims specifically related to 

infringement in the Western District of Texas. Id. Those 

infringement allegations, we explained, gave plaintiffs’ 

chosen forum no more of a local interest than the Northern 

District of California or any other venue. Id. 

In this case, we see no basis for a disposition different 

from the ones reached in Samsung. The district court here 

relied on the same improper grounds as in Samsung to diminish the clear convenience of the Northern District of 

California. The reasons for not finding judicial economy

considerations to override the clear convenience of the 

transferee venue also apply with even more force here. 

Though the district court in this case relied on the co-pending case against Lyft, Inc. as well as Bumble, both of those 

litigations involve entirely different underlying functionality and the Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd. et al. and LG 

Electronics Inc. et al. litigations have now been directed to 

be transferred to Northern California. In addition, the district court clearly erred in negating the transferee venue’s 

strong local interest by relying merely on the fact that 

plaintiffs alleged infringement in the Western District of 

Texas. 

Accordingly,

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IN RE: UBER TECHNOLOGIES, INC. 5

IT IS ORDERED THAT:

The petition for a writ of mandamus is granted. The 

district court’s May 26, 2021 order denying transfer is vacated, and the district court is directed to grant Uber’s motion to the extent that the case is transferred to the United 

States District Court for the Northern District of California 

under 28 U.S.C. § 1404(a).

July 08, 2021

Date

FOR THE COURT

/s/ Peter R. Marksteiner

Peter R. Marksteiner

Clerk of Court

s25

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