Texas Round-Up: May 2026

Our Texas Round-Up for May 2026 covers noteworthy case developments in Texas district courts. Three subjects stood out that month: (1) the availability of permanent injunctive relief following a jury verdict of willful infringement, (2) the consequences for a damages case when the patentee’s only damages expert is excluded, and (3) transfer of venue for convenience.

Collision Communications, Inc. v. Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd. et al, 2-23-cv-00587 (May 18, 2026, E.D. Tex.) (Gilstrap, J.)

Following a jury verdict that the asserted patents were willfully infringed, the court denied the plaintiff’s motion for a permanent injunction as to one of the patents. The court rejected the patentee’s contention that ongoing infringement constituted irreparable harm as a matter of law, declining the invitation to read the Supreme Court’s decision in Trump v. CASA as displacing the traditional eBay framework. Judge Gilstrap explained:

The Court declines [the plaintiff’s] invitation to find that Trump v. CASA, in stating that “a judge’s oath to follow the law” requires “[o]bserving . . . the boundaries of the Judiciary Act of 1789,” 606 U.S. at 858, has overturned the Federal Circuit in directly addressing the question at hand. . . . As Chief Justice Roberts’ concurrence in eBay sets out, the “difficulty of protecting a right to exclude through monetary remedies that allow an infringer to use an invention against the patentee’s wishes… often implicates the first two factors of the traditional test.” 547 U.S. at 395 (Roberts, J., concurring). However, he goes on to state that “[t]his historical practice… does not entitle a patentee to a permanent injunction or justify a general rule that such injunctions should issue.” Id. [The plaintiff’s] arguments for a finding of irreparable harm as a matter of law run afoul of this guidance.  

Id. at 6.  

paSafeShare, LLC v. Microsoft Corporation, 6-20-cv-00397 (Apr. 23, 2026, W.D. Tex.) (Albright, J.)

After excluding the plaintiff’s only damages expert, the court granted the defendant’s motion for summary judgment that the plaintiff lacked a remedy, rejecting the plaintiff’s proposal that the jury reconstruct the excluded expert’s analysis on its own. Judge Albright explained:

[The plaintiff] described a process by which the jury could perform its own version of [the plaintiff’s expert]’s analytical approach by considering various pieces of evidence and reaching a damages figure. . . . Damages “must not be left to conjecture by the jury. They must be proved, and not guessed at.” [The plaintiff]’s proposal would present a large amount of evidence to the jury and ask the jury to perform highly complex and detailed calculations to reach a damages award. And there would be no identified witness to explain to the jury why to assign particular values as it reached a damages award. The Court finds a jury would not have any evidence from which it could reach a non-speculative damages award, and that judgment as a matter of law is appropriate.

Id. at 5.

Intent IQ, LLC v. Snap, Inc., 7-25-cv-00181 (May 21, 2026, W.D. Tex.) (Gilliland, M.J.)

The court granted the defendant’s motion to transfer venue from the Western District of Texas to the Central District of California, finding that both the private and public interest factors favored transfer. As to the private interest factors, Magistrate Judge Gilliland explained:

Documents relating to the development and implementation of the accused instrumentalities, marketing and finances, and source code were created and are maintained in Central District of California. . . . The defendant limits access to its source code and no Texas employees have direct access to the core accused code bases. . . . As for the availability of compulsory process, the defendant identifies a former [] engineer who resides in California as the most knowledgeable person about two accused functionalities. . . . There are also at least sixteen inventors of prior art identified by the defendant and within the subpoena power of Central District of California. There is no comparable showing of non-party witnesses within the subpoena power of the Western District of Texas.

Id. at 3. Finding that the public interest factors aligned, the court concluded that because “[t]he defendant is headquartered in the Central District of California, the accused instrumentalities were developed there, and most of the defendant’s witnesses are there,” that forum was “clearly more convenient.” Id. at 4.

HFT Solutions, LLC v. Optiver US, LLC et al, 7-25-cv-00415 (May 22, 2026, W.D. Tex.) (Gilliland, M.J.)

The court granted an intra-district transfer, moving the case from the Midland/Odessa Division to the Austin Division of the Western District of Texas. Magistrate Judge Gilliland found the private interest factors decisive:

All physical evidence from the defendants is in Austin or Chicago. . . . The defendants maintain inventory of the accused FPGA boards at its Austin facility, while no source of relevant evidence is in Midland/Odessa. . . . The named inventor is not within the subpoena power of either Austin or Midland/Odessa, but if testimony of AMD witnesses becomes necessary at trial, only the Austin Division would be able to subpoena those witnesses to ensure their attendance. . . . [A]ll the defendants’ employees are in Austin or Chicago⎯to which the Austin Division would be clearly more convenient than Midland/Odessa.  

Id. at 3. The court added that the local interest factor reinforced the result, because the accused boards “are customized and inspected in Austin and the employees responsible for such design and inspection are based in Austin,” while “[n]either party has any ties to Midland/Odessa.” Id. at 4.