Court Opinion

ID: 9443100
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-03 19:11:12.6087+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:29:22.555684
License: Public Domain

LINDLEY, Circuit Judge
(dissenting).
The problem here seems to me a simple one. Sec. 1400(b) of Title 28 U.S.C. provides, in its very first clause, that an action “for patent infringement may be brought in the judicial district where the defendant *416resides”. Sec. 1391(c) of Title 28 U.S.C. prescribes that the district in which a corporation is incorporated or licensed to do business or is doing business “shall be regarded as the residence of such corporation for venue purposes.” The intervenor, plaintiff below, averred in its complaint that defendant, petitioner here, is a corporation licensed to do business in Illinois and is doing business within the Northern District of Illinois, thus bringing defendant within the class of corporate defendants whose residence is, by virtue of Sec. 1391(c), within the Northern District of Illinois. It seems to me that the District Court could not have done other than it did without doing violence to the clear provisions of the two sections. Inasmuch as defendant is a resident of the Northern District of Illinois, by virtue of the express provisions of Sec. 1391(c), plaintiff had a right, under Sec. 1400(b), to bring the suit in that District. To hold otherwise seems to me to require that we interpolate at the end of Sec. 1391(c) the phrase “except in patent infringement cases.” To do so is beyond our function. I would deny the petition.