Gratiot

The defendant, Air Maze Corporation, is a Delaware Corporation. It has filed a motion to dismiss and to quash service of summons for want of jurisdiction and improper venue. While there is some dispute as to the extent of the agency and activities of the defendant Gratiot, who held himself out as “factory representative” of the defendant corporation, it is conceded by the corporate defendant that his activities were more than that of a mere solicitor of sales, and in fact that the corporation was “doing business” within this district in the “jurisdictional sense.”

The question to be decided is this: whether under the 1948 Judicial Code a foreign corporation can be sued for patent infringement in a district in which it is admittedly “doing business” in the general jurisdictional sense, if it has not committed acts of infringement in the district and if it does not also have a “regular and established place of business in said district.”

The question is one of statutory construction.

The Sections of the 1948 Judicial Code involved, Sections 1400(b), 1391(c) and 1694 of Title 28, are set out in the margin.

The defendant contends that under Sec. 1400(b) it is necessary for…