I understand they're in federal courts, but can every district court in the U.S. claim jurisdiction over any alleged claim/crime, regardless of where that claim/crime took place within the U.S.?
Here's the technical answer: the federal courts have jurisdiction over (among other things) claims arising as a result of federal statutes, e.g., the patent laws. Suing in a particular US District Court is a matter of venue and venue is proper wherever the defendant does business. If New Egg ever sold an item or offered to sell an item anywhere in the Eastern District of Texas (and if you've got a website, then the answer is yes), then venue is proper in E.D. Tex.
> If New Egg ever sold an item or offered to sell an item anywhere in the Eastern District of Texas (and if you've got a website, then the answer is yes), then venue is proper in E.D. Tex.
Right, this is exactly what I'm asking. But why is the answer automatically "yes"? Why can't websites have a disclaimer saying "this company does not sell or ship to entities in the Eastern District of Texas"?
Newegg doesn't want to do this. They deliberately fight patent trolls and exhaust all avenues of appeal in an attempt to overturn bad patents. The fact that they lost in the trial court is a formality; they will win on appeal.
Actually it's not (edit: only / mainly) a question of venue, it's a question of personal jurisdiction as defined by Rule 4(k) of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure.
The general rule is that a federal court only has personal jurisdiction where a state court of general jurisdiction would have it. So both the constitutional due process requirements (International Shoe, et. al.) and the state long arm statute come into play. (This assumes the patent statutes don't have unique PJ rules, they might.)
All that said, without having actually looked into the case law, I'd imagine you couldn't defeat jurisdiction by not doing business in the forum because the Calder effects test would be construed to apply to infringing a patent owned by an entity in the forum.
