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6  TC HEARTLAND LLC v. KRAFT FOODS GROUP BRANDS LLC 

Opinion of the Court 

Congress  enacted  §1400(b)  as  a  standalone  venue  statute
and  that  nothing  in  the  1948  recodification  evidenced  an 
intent  to  alter  that  status.  The  fact  that  §1391(c)  by  “its
terms” embraced “all actions” was not enough to overcome 
the fundamental point that Congress designed §1400(b) to
be  “complete,  independent  and  alone  controlling  in  its
sphere.”  Id., at 228. 

The Court also concluded that “resides” in the recodified 
version of §1400(b) bore the same meaning as “inhabit[s]” 
in  the  pre-1948  version.  See  id.,  at  226  (“[T]he  [w]ords
‘inhabitant’  and  ‘resident,’  as  respects  venue,  are  synony-
mous” (internal quotation marks omitted)).  The substitu-
tion  of  “resides”  for  “inhabit[s]”  thus  did  not  suggest  any 
alteration  in  the  venue  rules  for  corporations  in  patent 
cases.  Accordingly, §1400(b) continued to apply to domes-
tic corporations in the same way it always had: They were
subject to venue only in their States of incorporation.  See 
ibid. (The use of “resides” “negat[es] any intention to make 
corporations  suable,  in  patent  infringement  cases,  where 
they  are  merely  ‘doing  business,’  because  those  synony-
mous  words  [“inhabitant”  and  “resident”]  mean  domicile 
and, in respect of corporations, mean the state of incorpo-
ration only”). 

B 

This  landscape  remained  effectively  unchanged  until 
1988, when Congress amended the general venue statute,
§1391(c),  to  provide  that  “[f]or  purposes  of  venue  under 
this  chapter,  a  defendant  that  is  a  corporation  shall  be
deemed  to  reside  in  any  judicial  district  in  which  it  is
subject  to  personal  jurisdiction  at  the  time  the  action  is
commenced.”  Judicial  Improvements  and  Access  to  Jus-
tice Act, §1013(a), 102 Stat. 4669.  The Federal Circuit in 
VE Holding Corp. v. Johnson Gas Appliance Co., 917 F. 2d 
1574  (1990),  announced  its  view  of  the  effect  of  this 
amendment  on  the  meaning  of  the  patent  venue  statute.