United States District Court, N.D. California, San Jose Division
ORDER GRANTING MOTION TO TRANSFER VENUE RE: DKT. NO.
110
LUCY
H. KOH United States District Judge.
Continental
Automotive Systems, Inc., the Plaintiff in this case, seeks
licenses for various standard essential patents associated
with the 2G, 3G, and 4G cellular standards. Plaintiff
believes the twelve defendants in this case have unlawfully
conspired to deny such licenses to Plaintiff on fair,
reasonable, and non-discriminatory (“FRAND”)
terms, wherefore Plaintiff brings this multi-count suit. A
subset of the defendants in this case have now moved to
transfer the case to the Northern District of Texas pursuant
to 28 U.S.C. § 1404(a). ECF No. 110. Having considered
the parties' briefing, the relevant law, and the record
in the case, the Court GRANTS the Motion to Transfer Venue.
I.
BACKGROUND
A.
Factual Background
Because
they are relevant to the Motion to Transfer Venue, the Court
briefly summarizes the allegations in Plaintiff's First
Amended Complaint (“FAC”).
Plaintiff
Continental Automotive Systems, Inc. is a Delaware
corporation with its principal place of business in Auburn
Hills, Michigan. FAC ¶ 16. Plaintiff is in the business
of making automotive components, which it sells to car
manufacturers. FAC ¶ 103. The car manufacturers, or
“OEMs” as Plaintiff calls them, then assemble the
components from Plaintiff and their other various suppliers
into the finished car. FAC ¶ 103. As relevant here,
Plaintiff produces telematics control units
(“TCUs”), which offer various
“telecommunications, infotainment, and safety
features.” Id. ¶ 18. These TCUs engage in
and rely upon cellular communications in order to function,
which means they implement cellular communications standards.
Id. ¶¶ 18, 70. Cellular communications
standards are technical standards that facilitate
communication and compatibility across different devices,
providers, and geographies. Id. ¶¶ 70, 71.
They are commonly identified by their
“generation”-i.e., 1G, 2G, 3G, and 4G.
Id. ¶¶ 70-76. Importantly, cellular
communications standards are not mandated by law, but rather
voluntarily adopted by members of the industry. Hence,
industry groups called standard-setting organizations, or
“SSOs” evolved to develop and manage these
standards. Id. ¶ 71. Among the SSOs implicated
in this case are the European Telecommunications Standards
Institute (“ETSI”), the Alliance for
Telecommunications Industry Solutions (“ATIS”),
and the Telecommunications Industry Association
(“TIA”). Id.
Although
standardization has benefits, it also has the potential for
anticompetitive consequences. Id. at 77. That is
because standards will often incorporate patented technology,
known as standard essential patents (“SEPs”). The
holders of those SEPs-who are typically members of the
SSOs-would then be able to charge exorbitant royalties from
or refuse to license to certain users of the standards.
Id. ¶ 123. In other words, each SEP holder
acquires monopoly power when their patented technologies
become a standard that others must use in order to
participate in the cellular communications industry.
Id. at 121. To prevent these eventualities, SSOs
have intellectual property right (“IPR”) policies
to which their members must adhere. Id. ¶ 79,
122. According to Plaintiff, the IPR policies of the SSOs
involved in this case require SSO members “to commit to
license their asserted SEPs to firms implementing the
standard on [fair, reasonable, and non-discriminatory
(“FRAND”)] terms and conditions.”
Id. ¶ 79. Plaintiff believes these IPR policies
also “require a SEP holder to license its alleged SEPs
on FRAND terms and conditions to any implementer within a
given supply chain that uses the standards.”
Id. ¶ 20.
In the
instant case, Plaintiff sues various companies who hold SEPs
associated with the 2G, 3G, and 4G standards: Nokia
Corporation (“Nokia Corp.”); Nokia of America
Corporation (“Nokia America”); Nokia Solutions
and Networks U.S. LLC (“Nokia Solutions”); Nokia
Solutions and Networks Oy (“Nokia Solutions Oy”);
Nokia Technologies Oy; Conversant Wireless Licensing SARL
(“Conversant SARL”); Optis UP Holdings, LLC
(“Optis UP”); Optis Cellular Technology, LLC
(“Optis Cellular”); Optis Wireless Technology,
LLC (“Optis Wireless”); and Sharp Corporation
(“Sharp”). Id. ¶¶ 87-97.
Plaintiff alleges that these companies- referred to
collectively by Plaintiff as “Defendant
Licensors”-have committed to grant licenses to their
SEPs on FRAND terms and conditions, in accordance with the
IPR policies of the various SSOs of which they are members.
Id. ¶¶ 87, 89, 92.
In
addition, Plaintiff sues Avanci, LLC and Avanci Platform
International Limited (“Avanci PIL”), referred to
collectively by Plaintiff as “Avanci.”
Id. at 1. According to Plaintiff, Avanci is a
“licensing platform” that “acts as a
licensing agent for a large group of patent owners and
traditional patent licensors, ” including Defendant
Licensors. Id. ¶ 107. Suppose a company
manufactures a product that implements a cellular
communications standard. Id. ¶¶ 111-12.
Instead of separately obtaining licenses from each of the SEP
holders, that company could obtain a collective license from
Avanci to all of the SEPs held by Avanci's members.
Id. The customer would pay a “flat”
royalty that varied with the type of product implementing the
standard, such as a car. Id. ¶ 112. Plaintiff
acknowledges that pools or platforms like Avanci “may
be efficient by reducing the transactional costs of
negotiating separate licenses with individual
licensors.” Id. ¶ 115. However, Plaintiff
believes Avanci is a “collusive vehicle” formed
by SEP holders who “wanted to preserve their ability to
continue to extract supra-FRAND licensing revenues.”
Id. at 28, ¶ 111. Plaintiff also alleges that
not all of the patents included in Avanci's collective
license are in fact “essential” for practicing
cellular communications standards. Id. ¶
116-17.
According
to Plaintiff, there are three main components to the scheme.
First, Avanci's members (including Defendant Licensors)
allegedly agreed to “collectively license their
asserted SEPs on non-FRAND terms.” Id. ¶
11. Second, Plaintiff believes Avanci's members entered
into a “multilateral agreement . . . to offer a
collective license to its members' SEPs only to
manufacturers at the very end of a supply chain, like car
OEMs” and not to upstream suppliers like Plaintiff.
Id. ¶ 112. In Plaintiff's view, the purpose
of this second agreement is to facilitate Avanci's
ability to charge supra-FRAND royalties. That is,
Avanci's high royalties “could not be sustained if
charged directly to suppliers in the supply chain with much
smaller prices and margins.” Id. ¶¶
10, 113. Only manufacturers of expensive end-products with
greater margins- such as OEMs-would be willing to pay
Avanci's royalties.
Third,
to disincentivize individual Avanci members from competing
“with each other or with Avanci in offering competitive
SEP license terms, ” Avanci's members are allegedly
retrained through an express agreement “from offering a
license in competition with an Avanci licensing program in
any manner that would hinder Avanci's ability to collect
its full stated supra-FRAND royalty” on the collective
license. Id. ¶ 129. The problem, according to
Plaintiff, is that a fully “exhaustive”
license-i.e., a license under which a supplier may
“pass through” rights to its customers-would
almost always impair Avanci's ability to collect its
ordinary royalty on a collective license. Id.
¶¶ 129, 133. Thus, although each Avanci member is
technically free to sell individual licenses to suppliers
outside of the Avanci platform, “it is practically
impossible for members to offer individual licenses to
suppliers that are fully exhaustive.” Id.
¶ 129.
In
support of Plaintiff's allegations regarding the workings
of the Avanci conspiracy, the FAC describes Plaintiff's
attempts to obtain licenses to Defendant Licensors' SEPs.
First, Plaintiff sought to obtain a collective license from
Avanci. Plaintiff alleges that, in keeping with the
above-described agreements, Avanci indicated “it would
only seek authorization from its members to license to
Continental if Continental agreed in advance to pay the same
inflated rates Avanci demands from the car OEMs.”
Id. ¶ 114. In other words, Avanci allegedly
required Plaintiff to pay the flat royalty for a car, even
though Plaintiff only sought to produce one component of a
car (i.e., TCUs).
Plaintiff
then contacted each of the Defendant Licensors individually
in an effort to obtain licenses to their respective SEPs.
Plaintiff alleges that they all “refused to offer a
direct license on FRAND terms.” Id. ¶
139. Thus, Plaintiff has been unable to obtain licenses to
the relevant SEPs on FRAND terms.
Moreover,
Plaintiff further alleges that it is harmed by Avanci's
charging of supra-FRAND royalties to car OEMs, which are
Plaintiff's customers. According to Plaintiff, Plaintiff
and other upstream suppliers in the automotive supply chain
actually “bear the artificially elevated cost of
Defendants' non-FRAND royalties because the OEMs
typically demand indemnity of such licensing costs as a
condition of purchasing” from those suppliers.
Id. ¶ 11. That is, Plaintiff's purchase
agreements with car OEMs contain “indemnification
clauses” obliging Plaintiff “to indemnify the
respective OEM for any royalties the OEM might pay for using
and/or selling” Plaintiff's TCUs as part of a
vehicle. Id. at 105.
In
Plaintiff's view, Defendant Licensors' actions
contravene the commitments that Defendant Licensors made
pursuant to the IPR policies of the SSOs of which they are
members. For instance, Plaintiff believes Defendant Licensors
have reneged upon their obligation “to license their
SEPs on FRAND terms and conditions.” Id.
¶ 86. Plaintiff further alleges that the IPR policies of
the relevant SSOs “require a SEP holder to license its
alleged SEPs on FRAND terms and conditions to any implementer
within a given supply chain that uses the standards, and not
merely to the manufacturers of “end-products.”
Id. ¶¶ 5, 80. In addition, Plaintiff
believes the above-described actions of Avanci and Defendant
Licensors amount to unlawful anticompetitive conduct. For
instance, Plaintiff alleges that Defendants' collusive
activity has permitted them to “illegally maintain[]
the monopoly power they initially obtained when their
patented technologies became standardized.”
Id. ¶ 126. Plaintiff also believes that the
bundling of non-essential patents with true SEPs in
Avanci's collective licenses constitutes “price
fixing and/or illegal tying.” Id. ¶ 116.
B.
Procedural History
Plaintiff
initially filed suit on May 10, 2019. ECF No. 1. On July 23,
2019, Plaintiff filed the operative First Amendment Complaint
(“FAC”). ECF No. 97. The FAC contains seven
causes of action: (1) breach of contract; (2) promissory
estoppel; (3) declaratory judgment; (4) violation of 15
U.S.C. § 1, Section 1 of the Sherman Act; (5) unlawful
monopolization in violation of 15 U.S.C. § 2, Section 2
of the Sherman Act; (6) conspiracy to monopolize in violation
of 15 U.S.C. § 2, Section 2 of the Sherman Act; and (7)
violation of the California Unfair Competition Law (the
“UCL”), Cal. Bus. & Prof. Code §§
17200 et seq. There are currently twelve defendants in the
case: (1) Avanci, LLC; (2) Avanci PIL; (3) Nokia Corp.; (4)
Nokia America; (5) Nokia Solutions; (6) Nokia Solutions Oy;
(7) Nokia Technologies Oy; (8) Conversant SARL; (9) Optis UP;
(10) Optis Cellular; (11) Optis Wireless; and (12) Sharp
(collectively, “Defendants”).
On July
31, 2019, a subset of Defendants-specifically, Avanci, LLC;
Nokia Corp.; Nokia America; Nokia Solutions; Nokia Solutions
Oy; Nokia Technologies Oy; and Conversant SARL (the
“Moving Defendants”)-moved to transfer the case
to the United States District Court for the Northern District
of Texas pursuant to 28 U.S.C. § 1404(a). ECF No. 110
(“Mot.”). Defendants Optis UP, Optis Cellular,
Optis Wireless (the “Optis Entities”), Avanci
PIL, and Sharp do not join in the motion because they each
have pending motions seeking to be dismissed from the case.
ECF No. 174 at 1 n.1. However, the Optis Entities have stated
that in the event “the Court determines to transfer the
case while the Optis entities are still part of the case, the
Optis Entities agree to the requested transfer to the
jurisdictions identified in the motion.” ECF No. 136 at
12 n.3. Avanci PIL and Sharp Corporation have likewise
represented that they do not oppose transfer. ECF No. 174 at
1 n.1.
Plaintiff
opposed the motion to transfer on August 28, 2019, ECF No.
157, and the Moving Defendants replied on September 13, 2019,
ECF No. 174.
Also
pending before the Court is Defendants' consolidated
Motion to Dismiss, which was filed on August 30, 2019. ECF
No. 162. That motion has been fully briefed. ECF Nos. 182,
193.
II.
ORDER OF ANALYSIS
At the
outset, the Court notes that Defendants' consolidated
Motion to Dismiss raises, inter alia, several
jurisdictional challenges. First, all Defendants move to
dismiss for lack of Article III standing. ECF No. 162 at 4.
Second, Defendants Nokia Corp., Conversant SARL, Avanci PIL,
and the Optis Entities move to dismiss for lack of personal
jurisdiction, though Conversant SARL moves without stating
any argument. Id. at 23-24, 28. Third, Sharp moves
to dismiss for insufficient service of process. Id.
at 26. A motion to dismiss for insufficient service of
process is a jurisdictional challenge because a court lacks
jurisdiction if there has been insufficient service of
process. United States v. 4268 Los Angeles Ave. Simi
Valley California 93063, 672 Fed.Appx. 770, 770 (9th
Cir. 2017). Accordingly, before proceeding to the merits of
the motion to transfer, the Court first explains why it need
not resolve Defendants' various jurisdictional
challenges.
It is
well-established that “jurisdiction generally must
precede merits in dispositional order.” Ruhrgas AG
v. Marathon Oil Co., 526 U.S. 574, 577 (1999). It is
equally clear, however, that “[j]urisdiction is vital
only if the court proposes to issue a judgment on the
merits.” Sinochem Int'l Co. v. Malaysia
Int'l Shipping Corp., 549 U.S. 422, 431 (2007). As
the U.S. Supreme Court held in Sinochem, a dismissal
on the ground of forum non conveniens is not a
judgment on the merits. Id. at 432. Rather,
“it is a determination that the merits should be
adjudicated elsewhere.” Id. The same is true
of a transfer pursuant to 28 U.S.C. § 1404(a), which
“is merely a codification of the doctrine of forum
non conveniens for the subset of cases in which the
transferee forum is within the federal court system.”
Atl. Marine Const. Co. v. U.S. Dist. Court for W. Dist.
of Texas, 571 U.S. 49, 60 (2013). “A district
court therefore may dispose of an action by a forum non
conveniens dismissal, ”-or transfer a case pursuant to
§ 1404(a)-“bypassing questions of subject-matter
and personal jurisdiction, when considerations of
convenience, fairness, and judicial economy so
warrant.” Sinochem, 549 U.S. at 432;
accord Pub. Employees' Ret. Sys. of Mississippi v.
Stanley, 605 F.Supp.2d 1073, 1075 (C.D. Cal. 2009)
(citing Sinochem for the proposition that “[a]
decision to transfer for inconvenient forum is not a decision
on the merits and therefore does not require a finding of
jurisdiction.”). After all, the purpose of §
1404(a) is to “prevent the waste of time, energy, and
money and to protect litigants, witnesses, and the public
against unnecessary inconvenience and expense.” Van
Dusen v. Barrack, 376 U.S. 612, 616 (1964). Therefore,
“where subject-matter or personal jurisdiction is
difficult to determine, and forum non conveniens
considerations weigh heavily in favor of dismissal, the court
properly takes the less burdensome course.”
Sinochem, 549 U.S. at 436.
Here,
the jurisdictional challenges in Defendants' consolidated
Motion to Dismiss are complex and may require the Court to
look beyond the pleadings. For instance, Defendants'
contention that Plaintiff lacks Article III standing is not a
straightforward issue of law. Instead, the propriety of
standing appears to turn in part on factual disputes,
wherefore Defendants have submitted several affidavits in
support of their motion. See Savage v. Glendale Union
High Sch., Dist. No. 205, Maricopa Cty., 343 F.3d 1036,
1040 n.2 (9th Cir. 2003) (“Once the moving party has
converted the motion to dismiss into a factual motion by
presenting affidavits or other evidence properly brought
before the court, the party opposing the motion must furnish
affidavits or other evidence necessary to satisfy its burden
of establishing subject matter jurisdiction.”). Indeed,
considering the complexity of the standing issues, further
briefing or jurisdictional discovery may be necessary.
Sharp's
motion to dismiss for insufficient service of process is
similarly complex, as it appears to turn in part on the
factual relationship between Sharp and its U.S. subsidiary.
ECF No. 162 at 26-27; ECF No. 182 at 29; ECF No. 193 at 15.
Judicial economy and fairness are therefore disserved by
continuing litigation in the Northern District of California.
Regarding
the challenges to personal jurisdiction, only four of the
twelve Defendants argue that this Court lacks personal
jurisdiction over them. Deferring transfer of the case in
order to resolve these defendants' objections would
saddle the other defendants with unnecessary expense and
delay. As Plaintiff's FAC alleges a conspiracy amongst
all the Defendants, severance of the case would be
inappropriate. See, e.g., Anticancer, Inc. v.
Pfizer Inc., No. 11CV107 JLS RBB, 2012 WL 1019796, at *1
(S.D. Cal. Mar. 26, 2012) (stating that severance should not
be used “to separate an essentially unitary
problem”).
For
these reasons-and because, as discussed below, the Court
finds the motion to transfer to be meritorious-the Court need
not reach Defendants' jurisdictional challenges.
III.
LEGAL STANDARD
A
motion to transfer venue from one district to another is
governed by 28 U.S.C. § 1404(a). That statute states:
“For the convenience of parties and witnesses, in the
interest of justice, a district court may transfer any civil
action to any other district or division where it might have
been brought.” 28 U.S.C. § 1404(a). Generally, the
party seeking transfer bears the burden of showing that
transfer is appropriate.[1] Jones v. GNC Franchising,
Inc., 211 F.3d 495, 499 (9th Cir. 2000). Under the plain
text of the statute, the moving party must make two showings
in order to justify transfer. First, the transferee forum
must be one in which the case “might have been
brought.” Hoffman v. Blaski, 363 U.S. 335, 344
(1960). “In determining whether an action ‘might
have been brought' in a district, the court looks to
whether the action initially could have been commenced in
that district.” Hatch v. Reliance Ins. Co.,
758 F.2d 409, 414 (9th Cir. 1985).
Second,
provided the case could have been brought in the proposed
transferee forum, the movant must persuade the court that
considerations of “convenience of parties and
witnesses” and “the interest of justice”
weigh in favor of transfer. Earth Island Inst. v.
Quinn, 56 F.Supp.3d 1110, 1117 (N.D. Cal. 2014). The
Ninth Circuit has identified a number of specific but
non-exhaustive factors which “the court may
consider” in analyzing those overarching statutory
considerations: “(1) the location where the relevant
agreements were negotiated and executed, (2) the state that
is most familiar with the governing law, (3) the
plaintiff's choice of forum, (4) the respective
parties' contacts with the forum, (5) the contacts
relating to the plaintiff's cause of action in the chosen
forum, (6) the differences in the costs of litigation in the
two forums, (7) the availability of compulsory process to
compel attendance of unwilling non-party witnesses, . . . (8)
the ease of access to sources of proof, ” (9)
“the presence of a forum selection clause, ” if
any; and (10) “the relevant public policy of the forum
state, if any.” Jones, 211 F.3d at 498-99. A
district court is not restricted to the pleadings on a motion
transfer and may consider, inter alia,
“undisputed facts supported by affidavits, depositions,
stipulations, or other relevant documents.”
FastCap, LLC v. Snake River Tool Co., LLC, No.
15-CV-02764-JSC, 2015 WL 6828196, at *2 (N.D. Cal. Nov. 6,
2015). At all events, § 1404(a) affords the court
significant discretion to transfer the case based on an
“individualized, case-by-case consideration of
convenience and fairness.” Stewart Org., Inc. v.
Ricoh Corp., 487 U.S. 22, 29 (1988) (quoting Van
Dusen, 376 U.S. at 622).
IV.
DISCUSSION
In the
Motion to Transfer, the Moving Defendants seek to transfer
this case to the Northern District of Texas. As set forth
below, the Court finds that the case “might have been
brought” in the Northern District of Texas and that
convenience and the interest of justice favor transfer.
A.
The Instant Case “Might Have Been Brought” in the
Northern District of Texas
“To
find that the action could have been brought in the
transferee district, the Court must be satisfied that the
transferee district has personal jurisdiction over all of the
Defendants and that venue would be proper in that
District.” Ponomarenko v. Shapiro, 287
F.Supp.3d 816, 834 (N.D. Cal. 2018); see Hoffman,
363 U.S. at 343-44 (agreeing with respondents that if
“the courts of [the transferee] district lacked venue
over the action and ability to command jurisdiction over the
defendants, ” the transferor court “was without
power to transfer it to that district”). Whether a case
“might have been brought” is determined based on
“the posture of the case at the time of filing in the
transferor district.” A. J. Indus., Inc. v. U.S.
Dist. Court for Cent. Dist. of California, 503 F.2d 384,
386 (9th Cir. 1974).
Plaintiff
does not address-and so apparently does not dispute-the
Moving Defendants' contention that the instant action
could have been brought in the Northern District of Texas. As
set out below, the Court agrees that the Northern District of
Texas could exercise personal jurisdiction over all
Defendants and that venue would be proper in the Northern
District of Texas.
1.
The Northern District of Texas Could Exercise Personal
Jurisdiction over Defendants
There
are two types of claims in the FAC: (1) federal antitrust
claims, and (2) state law claims, including Plaintiff's
claim for declaratory judgment. The Court analyzes each in
turn.
a.
Nationwide Personal Jurisdiction over the Federal Antitrust
Claims
Plaintiff
brings three claims for violations of the Sherman Act. In
general, a district court may exercise personal jurisdiction
over a defendant “if a rule or statute authorizes it to
do so and the exercise of such jurisdiction comports with the
constitutional requirement of due process.” Myers
v. Bennett Law Offices, 238 F.3d 1068, 1072 (9th Cir.
2001) (internal quotation marks omitted); see Fed.
R. Civ. P. 4(k)(1)(C). As for statutory authorization,
Section 12 of the Clayton Act provides for personal
jurisdiction in antitrust suits against corporate defendants
as follows:
Any suit, or proceeding under the antitrust laws against a
corporation may be brought not only in the judicial district
whereof it is an inhabitant, but also in any district wherein
it may be found or transacts business; and all process in
such cases may be served in the district of which it is an
inhabitant, or wherever it may be found.
15 U.S.C. § 22 (emphasis added); see also BNSF Ry.
Co. v. Tyrrell, 137 S.Ct. 1549, 1555 (2017) (explaining
that “Congress' typical mode of providing for the
exercise of personal jurisdiction has been to authorize
service of process” and giving 15 U.S.C. § 22 as
an example). As the Ninth Circuit has held, this provision
provides for nationwide personal jurisdiction-i.e., personal
jurisdiction in any federal district court. Go-Video,
Inc. v. Akai Elec. Co., 885 F.2d 1406, 1413 (9th Cir.
1989) (affirming that “since process, under § 12,
could be served anywhere in the country (indeed anywhere in
the world), ” personal jurisdiction “could be
obtained in any judicial district in the United
States”) Section 12 thus provides statutory
authorization for personal jurisdiction in the Northern
District of Texas.
Turning
to the due process component of personal jurisdiction, a
defendant must have “minimum contacts” with the
territorial jurisdiction of a court “such that the
maintenance of the suit does not offend ‘traditional
notions of fair play and substantial justice.'”
Walden v. Fiore, 571 U.S. 277, 283 (2014) (quoting
Int'l Shoe Co. v. Washington, 326 U.S. 310, 316
(1945)). The Ninth Circuit has “held that the relevant
forum with which a defendant must have ‘minimum
contacts' in a suit brought under Section 12 of the
Clayton Act is the United States, ” rather than a
particular state. Action Embroidery Corp., 368 F.3d
at 1180; accord FTC v. Americans for Fin. Reform,
720 Fed.Appx. 380, 383 (9th Cir. 2017) (applying national
contacts analysis). The question at hand is therefore whether
the Defendants have sufficient minimum contacts with the
United States as whole to establish either specific or
general jurisdiction.
At the
outset, the Court notes that several of the Defendants
(Avanci, LLC; Nokia America; Nokia Solutions; Optis Wireless;
Optis Cellular; and Optis UP) are incorporated in the United
States and have their principal places of business in the
United States. FAC ¶¶ 20, 28-29, 44-46. These
defendants are indisputably “at home” in the
United States, such that general jurisdiction is proper.
See Daimler AG v. Bauman, 571 U.S. 117, 137 (2014)
(“With respect to a corporation, the place of
incorporation and principal place of business are paradigm
bases for general jurisdiction.”); see Action
Embroidery Corp., 368 F.3d at 1180 (finding nationwide
minimum contacts for “a Virginia professional
corporation operating in the United States”).
Without
addressing whether the remaining Defendants' contacts
with the United States justify general jurisdiction, the
Court finds that, at the very least, specific jurisdiction is
proper over all Defendants. “Under specific
jurisdiction, a court may assert jurisdiction for a cause of
action that arises out of the defendant's forum-related
activities.” Yahoo! Inc. v. La Ligue Contre Le
Racisme Et L'Antisemitisme, 433 F.3d 1199, 1205 (9th
Cir. 2006). The Ninth Circuit has set forth the following
“three-part test ...