>Delaware, being the hub of all sorts of business litigation, sees things at a more abstract level. You're less likely to get a judge or jury in Delaware that c

>Delaware, being the hub of all sorts of business litigation, sees things at a more abstract level. You're less likely to get a judge or jury in Delaware that comes in with a particular preconceived notion of X or Y being bad. There are also some problems which come from so much being litigated in Delaware. I have been working with a bankruptcy attorney looking at venue laws which run into similar issues as patents. As many patent lawsuits have been filed in Eastern Texas, many bankruptcies are filed in Delaware even if there is no functional basis for the company there outside of the state of incorporation. By running everything through Delaware, you're often taking the chance of reasonable representation away away from defendants (or creditors in the case of bankruptcy). If a company who only has facilities in Iowa goes belly up, there are likely dozens of companies who they owe money to, many of which are in the surrounding communities. Now the hundreds of farmers who are owed money have to fly to Wilmington Delaware if they want any chance of representation. Delaware Bar will require that a local attorney introduce whatever attorney from Iowa was hired to represent the farmers (if the Iowa attorney is competent, the Delaware attorney is literally introducing them and reviewing some documents before submission). Local council adds another expense for small businesses on the short end of a bankruptcy. The geographic difference adds significant expense in terms of travel. The VeraSun grain elevator case had a company headquartered in South Dakota with no operations east of Indiana and they filed in Delaware. There are other cases with even larger geographic differences out of California and Hawaii. Marsh supermarkets is headquartered in Indianapolis, Indiana and recently filed for bankruptcy in Delaware. They have thousands of employees, but only about 250 are salaried, the rest are hourly, largely store employees. Many of them are owed money from working their normal shifts. It will be very hard for the employees to feel like they had a chance at getting fair representation if they have to go to Delaware to see court proceeding happening. It could just as well have been held in Indianapolis with local attorneys representing hourly employees at a more reasonable total expense. Finally, a disproportionate amount of power in deciding bankruptcy or patent cases should not lay in the hands of a few judges. We've already seen what happens when a single judge has vastly different views on a given topic than pretty much anyone else with the mess of patent trolls in Eastern Texas. That one judge cost companies hundreds of millions to billions of dollars in cases which would have seen a different result if heard by a variety of judges from across the country. By running everything through Delaware, the concept of various opinions from across the nation being debated through many cases and going to appeals where needed goes out the window. A handful of judges in Delaware will decide what happens in the nations most significant bankruptcy and patent cases.