6 ms·

What would a piece of legislation be to actually solve the issue with East Texas court being so pro-patent? Something like all patent suits must be prosecuted i

What would a piece of legislation be to actually solve the issue with East Texas court being so pro-patent? Something like all patent suits must be prosecuted in the jurisdiction of the company supposedly infringing? Which I guess would end up in Delaware mostly... It seems like there are problems in the patent office with issuing a lot of patents that shouldn't have been issued in the first place, but there is also a problem with there being several judges who collectively control billions of dollars worth of legal decisions. So if you're going to legislate, it seems to me that patents should be easier to overturn and cases need to be spread more uniformly across jurisdictions.

ubernostrum 10y ago
Honestly, a more meaningful step would be to remove the Federal Circuit's exclusive jurisdiction over patent case appeals. Normally when a federal case gets appealed, it goes to the court of appeals for the part of the country where the case originated. But appeals in patent cases go exclusively to the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (CAFC). This has led to the CAFC diverging significantly from traditional interpretation of patent law and to several strong rebukes from the Supreme Court, thanks in large part to the feedback loop of primarily seeing cases from people seeking highly expansive readings of patent law. Restoring diversity to patent cases -- by having appeals go to the geographic circuit courts instead of concentrating them all in a single specialized court -- would do a lot to roll back the overzealous expansions of patent law we've seen in recent decades.
- Trill-I-Am 10y ago
  Why does concentration of jurisdiction inherently lead to expansive patent readings?
  - GavinMcG 10y ago
    The comment you replied to suggested that it's partly because of "the feedback loop of primarily seeing cases from people seeking highly expansive readings of patent law." That is, these judges constantly see patent cases that are looking for expansiveness, which means that their baseline for what's normal may be skewed, or they may be primed for expansiveness.
    - smallnamespace 10y ago
      > judges constantly see patent cases that are looking for expansivenes How does that solve the problem? Wouldn't normal appeals courts see the exact same set of cases as the patent circuit currently does, under this proposal?
      - ubernostrum 10y ago
        If patent cases were distributed geographically the way other cases are, then in theory the other circuits would see patent cases become a small fraction of their caseload, which reduces the chance of the feedback-loop problem in any specific circuit. In reality, probably most cases would end up in the Fifth Circuit because that's the one that gets appeals from the Eastern District of Texas, but that's when you can step in and start pushing to avoid the venue-shopping problem that weighs down East Texas with patent cases.
  - ScottBurson 10y ago
    Patent attorneys tend to have a pro-patent bias, and these attitudes seem to have rubbed off on Federal Circuit judges. Most obviously, a significant minority of Federal Circuit judges have been patent lawyers themselves, whereas judges on other courts almost never come from a patent law background. But beyond that, the heavy load of patent cases on the court's docket means that the judges of the Federal Circuit are constantly interacting with patent lawyers. In addition to hearing their arguments in the courtroom, they read the same patent law publications as the lawyers, hire young patent lawyers to clerk for them, and are invited to speak at events organized by the patent bar. [0] [0] http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2012/09/how-a-rogue-appeals-court-wrecked-the-patent-system/ http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2012/09/how-a-rogue-appea...
- dave_sullivan 10y ago
  > Something like all patent suits must be prosecuted in the jurisdiction of the company supposedly infringing? > cases need to be spread more uniformly across jurisdictions. > Honestly, a more meaningful step would be to remove the Federal Circuit's exclusive jurisdiction over patent case appeals. > Restoring diversity to patent cases -- by having appeals go to the geographic circuit courts instead of concentrating them all in a single specialized court I think we agree on the principal that one court shouldn't have that much power (unless we're talking about the supreme court I suppose, but that serves a different purpose), how would a change like that even be implemented? Would laws have to be passed state by state or would federal law supersede that? Is there a better way to reduce the power of patent trolls? I haven't heard any, and I've followed the issue on and off for a good decade now without seeing much change.
  - comex 10y ago
    All US patent law is federal, as authority over copyright and patents is one of the things explicitly granted to Congress in the Constitution [1]; the District Court for the Eastern District of Texas, the one that tried this case, is a federal court [2]. The Federal Circuit's jurisdiction over patent cases comes from federal law, specifically 28 USC § 1295 [3], so altering it would 'just' be a matter of amending that. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_patent_law https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_patent_law [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_District_Court_for_the_Eastern_District_of_Texas#Patent_litigation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_District_Court_f... [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Court_of_Appeals_for_the_Federal_Circuit https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Court_of_Appeals...
roflchoppa 10y ago
So there is a judge out there, and his son is a practicing lawyer who reps. PT and PT victims. Basically legal racketeering. It would be interesting to see emails dumped from these guys, and how much corruption is taking place. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sG9UMMq2dz4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sG9UMMq2dz4 its like 5 min in.
WildUtah 10y ago
What would a piece of legislation be to actually solve the issue with East Texas court being so pro-patent? Something like all patent suits must be prosecuted in the jurisdiction of the company supposedly infringing? Well, we could try passing a law like this: "Any civil action for patent infringement may be brought in the judicial district where the defendant resides, or where the defendant has committed acts of infringement and has a regular and established place of business." And we tried passing such a law. The text above is 28 U.S.C. §1400 (b) and has been the law of the United States since the 1897 patent statute. The Supreme Court says, "venue in patent infringement actions is solely and exclusively governed by § 1400(b), as a special and specific venue statute applicable to that species of litigation," (Fourco Glass Co. v. Transmirra Products Corp., 353 U.S. 222 (1957)) and has never reversed or amended that opinion. But when you live under a corrupt and openly self-interested judiciary, you can't depend on the law to protect you. In 1982, after much lobbying from the patent bar, Congress directed all appeals of patent cases away from regional circuit courts of appeal, where almost all other appeals go, to the newly created Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (CAFC). The patent bar wanted a court filled with appointees from its own ranks to create new case law that would force engineers and companies to pay out much more fealty and cash to the patent lawyers themselves. And we get an explosion in patents and patent litigation. Software patents were legalized by the CAFC and the CAFC abolished the venue statute in the VE Holding case of 1990, driving patent litigation to the entrepreneurial judges of the corrupt East Texas District. Usually a court can't just decide to abolish a statute like that, but when an appeals court has exclusive national jurisdiction, there's no check on its power. The Supreme Court justices often comment on the power and freedom from ordinary limits of the CAFC and it is the most often reversed 9-0 of the appeals courts, but the Supreme Court can rarely make time to reverse all the CAFC's messes. The CAFC takes about 2-5,000 cases a year and the Supreme Court takes a couple hundred, just a handful of those from the CAFC. The TC Heartland case is currently under appeal to the Supreme Court asking it to reverse the CAFC abolition of this statute. If the Supreme Court takes the case, East Texas will soon be limited to cattle and civil cash forfeiture cases.

What would a piece of legislation be to actually solve the issue with East Texas court being so pro-patent? Something like all patent suits must be prosecuted in the jurisdiction of the company supposedly infringing? Which I guess would end up in Delaware mostly... It seems like there are problems in the patent office with issuing a lot of patents that shouldn't have been issued in the first place, but there is also a problem with there being several judges who collectively control billions of dollars worth of legal decisions. So if you're going to legislate, it seems to me that patents should be easier to overturn and cases need to be spread more uniformly across jurisdictions.

ubernostrum 10y ago

Honestly, a more meaningful step would be to remove the Federal Circuit's exclusive jurisdiction over patent case appeals. Normally when a federal case gets appealed, it goes to the court of appeals for the part of the country where the case originated. But appeals in patent cases go exclusively to the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (CAFC). This has led to the CAFC diverging significantly from traditional interpretation of patent law and to several strong rebukes from the Supreme Court, thanks in large part to the feedback loop of primarily seeing cases from people seeking highly expansive readings of patent law. Restoring diversity to patent cases -- by having appeals go to the geographic circuit courts instead of concentrating them all in a single specialized court -- would do a lot to roll back the overzealous expansions of patent law we've seen in recent decades.

Trill-I-Am 10y ago
Why does concentration of jurisdiction inherently lead to expansive patent readings?
- GavinMcG 10y ago
  The comment you replied to suggested that it's partly because of "the feedback loop of primarily seeing cases from people seeking highly expansive readings of patent law." That is, these judges constantly see patent cases that are looking for expansiveness, which means that their baseline for what's normal may be skewed, or they may be primed for expansiveness.
  - smallnamespace 10y ago
    > judges constantly see patent cases that are looking for expansivenes How does that solve the problem? Wouldn't normal appeals courts see the exact same set of cases as the patent circuit currently does, under this proposal?
    - ubernostrum 10y ago
      If patent cases were distributed geographically the way other cases are, then in theory the other circuits would see patent cases become a small fraction of their caseload, which reduces the chance of the feedback-loop problem in any specific circuit. In reality, probably most cases would end up in the Fifth Circuit because that's the one that gets appeals from the Eastern District of Texas, but that's when you can step in and start pushing to avoid the venue-shopping problem that weighs down East Texas with patent cases.
- ScottBurson 10y ago
  Patent attorneys tend to have a pro-patent bias, and these attitudes seem to have rubbed off on Federal Circuit judges. Most obviously, a significant minority of Federal Circuit judges have been patent lawyers themselves, whereas judges on other courts almost never come from a patent law background. But beyond that, the heavy load of patent cases on the court's docket means that the judges of the Federal Circuit are constantly interacting with patent lawyers. In addition to hearing their arguments in the courtroom, they read the same patent law publications as the lawyers, hire young patent lawyers to clerk for them, and are invited to speak at events organized by the patent bar. [0] [0] http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2012/09/how-a-rogue-appeals-court-wrecked-the-patent-system/ http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2012/09/how-a-rogue-appea...
dave_sullivan 10y ago
> Something like all patent suits must be prosecuted in the jurisdiction of the company supposedly infringing? > cases need to be spread more uniformly across jurisdictions. > Honestly, a more meaningful step would be to remove the Federal Circuit's exclusive jurisdiction over patent case appeals. > Restoring diversity to patent cases -- by having appeals go to the geographic circuit courts instead of concentrating them all in a single specialized court I think we agree on the principal that one court shouldn't have that much power (unless we're talking about the supreme court I suppose, but that serves a different purpose), how would a change like that even be implemented? Would laws have to be passed state by state or would federal law supersede that? Is there a better way to reduce the power of patent trolls? I haven't heard any, and I've followed the issue on and off for a good decade now without seeing much change.
- comex 10y ago
  All US patent law is federal, as authority over copyright and patents is one of the things explicitly granted to Congress in the Constitution [1]; the District Court for the Eastern District of Texas, the one that tried this case, is a federal court [2]. The Federal Circuit's jurisdiction over patent cases comes from federal law, specifically 28 USC § 1295 [3], so altering it would 'just' be a matter of amending that. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_patent_law https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_patent_law [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_District_Court_for_the_Eastern_District_of_Texas#Patent_litigation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_District_Court_f... [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Court_of_Appeals_for_the_Federal_Circuit https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Court_of_Appeals...

roflchoppa 10y ago

So there is a judge out there, and his son is a practicing lawyer who reps. PT and PT victims. Basically legal racketeering. It would be interesting to see emails dumped from these guys, and how much corruption is taking place. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sG9UMMq2dz4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sG9UMMq2dz4 its like 5 min in.

WildUtah 10y ago

What would a piece of legislation be to actually solve the issue with East Texas court being so pro-patent? Something like all patent suits must be prosecuted in the jurisdiction of the company supposedly infringing? Well, we could try passing a law like this: "Any civil action for patent infringement may be brought in the judicial district where the defendant resides, or where the defendant has committed acts of infringement and has a regular and established place of business." And we tried passing such a law. The text above is 28 U.S.C. §1400 (b) and has been the law of the United States since the 1897 patent statute. The Supreme Court says, "venue in patent infringement actions is solely and exclusively governed by § 1400(b), as a special and specific venue statute applicable to that species of litigation," (Fourco Glass Co. v. Transmirra Products Corp., 353 U.S. 222 (1957)) and has never reversed or amended that opinion. But when you live under a corrupt and openly self-interested judiciary, you can't depend on the law to protect you. In 1982, after much lobbying from the patent bar, Congress directed all appeals of patent cases away from regional circuit courts of appeal, where almost all other appeals go, to the newly created Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (CAFC). The patent bar wanted a court filled with appointees from its own ranks to create new case law that would force engineers and companies to pay out much more fealty and cash to the patent lawyers themselves. And we get an explosion in patents and patent litigation. Software patents were legalized by the CAFC and the CAFC abolished the venue statute in the VE Holding case of 1990, driving patent litigation to the entrepreneurial judges of the corrupt East Texas District. Usually a court can't just decide to abolish a statute like that, but when an appeals court has exclusive national jurisdiction, there's no check on its power. The Supreme Court justices often comment on the power and freedom from ordinary limits of the CAFC and it is the most often reversed 9-0 of the appeals courts, but the Supreme Court can rarely make time to reverse all the CAFC's messes. The CAFC takes about 2-5,000 cases a year and the Supreme Court takes a couple hundred, just a handful of those from the CAFC. The TC Heartland case is currently under appeal to the Supreme Court asking it to reverse the CAFC abolition of this statute. If the Supreme Court takes the case, East Texas will soon be limited to cattle and civil cash forfeiture cases.