UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT FOR THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA PAUL C. CLARK, Plaintiff, v. No. 21-cv-1007 (DLF) DOCUSIGN, INC., Defendant. MEMORANDUM OPINION Before the Court is the defendant’s Renewed Motion to Dismiss for Improper Venue, Dkt. 27. Because venue is not proper in this District, the Court will grant the defendant’s motion in part and transfer this case to the Northern District of California. I. BACKGROUND On April 12, 2021, Paul Clark brought this action against DocuSign, Inc. alleging willful infringement by DocuSign of three of his patents related to electronic signatures. Compl., Dkt. 1; Am. Compl. ¶¶ 1, 11–44, Dkt. 5. DocuSign is incorporated in Delaware and headquartered in San Francisco, California. Am. Compl. ¶ 4. It maintains offices in California, Illinois, New York, and Washington state, Lewis Decl. ¶ 3, Dkt. 6-2, but it does not have an office in the District of Columbia, id.; Lewis Decl. ¶ 4, Dkt. 13-1. DocuSign filed an initial motion to dismiss for improper venue, Dkt. 6, and the Court granted Clark’s motion for venue discovery, Dkt. 8. Order, Dkt. 20. The Court permitted discovery as to the number of DocuSign’s employees who work remotely, the type of business conducted by DocuSign’s D.C.-based employees, and DocuSign’s recruitment of employees to work in D.C. Order at 3–4. Now before the Court is DocuSign’s Renewed Motion to Dismiss for Improper Venue, Dkt. 27. II. LEGAL STANDARDS When a plaintiff brings suit in an improper venue, the district court “shall dismiss [the case], or if it be in the interest of justice, transfer such case to any district or division in which it could have been brought.” 28 U.S.C. § 1406(a); see also Fed. R. Civ. P. 12(b)(3). “In considering a Rule 12(b)(3) motion, the Court accepts the plaintiff’s well-pled factual allegations regarding venue as true, draws all reasonable inferences from those allegations in the plaintiff’s favor, and resolves any factual conflicts in the plaintiff’s favor.” Tower Lab’ys, Ltd. v. Lush Cosmetics Ltd., 285 F. Supp. 3d 321, 323 (D.D.C. 2018) (citation and internal quotation marks omitted). The Court need not “accept the plaintiff’s legal conclusions as true,” and it “may consider material outside of the pleadings.” Id. In patent infringement cases, 28 U.S.C. § 1400(b) governs venue, see TC Heartland LLC v. Kraft Foods Grp. Brands LLC, 137 S. Ct. 1514, 1519 (2017), and Federal Circuit precedent is controlling, see In re ZTE (USA) Inc., 890 F.3d 1008, 1012 (Fed. Cir. 2018). The plaintiff bears the burden of establishing that venue is proper, id. at 1013, and § 1400(b) “is intended to be restrictive of venue in patent cases compared with the broad general venue provision,” id. at 1014. Patent venue must be proper at the time that the complaint was filed—here, in April 2021. In re EMC Corp., 501 F. App’x 973, 976 (Fed. Cir. 2013). 2 III. ANALYSIS A. Improper Venue Under 28 U.S.C. § 1400(b), a plaintiff may bring civil patent infringement actions “in the judicial district where the defendant resides, …
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