There's some outdated information here: Davis and Ward are former judges for the district, and both "have sons who are attorneys with patent-focused legal pract

There's some outdated information here: Davis and Ward are former judges for the district, and both "have sons who are attorneys with patent-focused legal practices" in the district. However, both have now retired [0]. The current judge in Marshall, Rodney Gilstrap, does have a son, but one who does not practice patent litigation [1] [2]. [3] gives a lot more information about the origin of the rules that made East Texas initially attractive, as well as how "there are signs [Gilstrap] is starting to crack down on patent trolls." It's a much more nuanced story, with a clear narrative of how judges acting in good faith might design rules like this to speed up litigation... and I'm unsure how much a judiciary can or should take into account e.g. parties' abilities to pay for discovery, one of the main contributors to the environment here [4], when deciding on those rules. Federal legislative reform would be the clearest path here, but that's hard to come by these days. (I am not a lawyer.) [0] https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2015/04/east-texas-judge-who-oversaw-1700-patent-cases-joins-biggest-ip-law-firm/ https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2015/04/east-texas-judge... [1] http://mcsmith.blogs.com/eastern_district_of_texas/2011/05/judge-rodney-gilstrap-of-marshall-named-for-eastern-district-judgeship.html http://mcsmith.blogs.com/eastern_district_of_texas/2011/05/j... [2] https://www.velaw.com/Who-We-Are/Find-a-Lawyer/Gilstrap--Stephen/ https://www.velaw.com/Who-We-Are/Find-a-Lawyer/Gilstrap--Ste... [3] https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/aek3pp/the-small-town-judge-who-sees-a-quarter-of-the-nations-patent-cases https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/aek3pp/the-small-... [4] http://www.patentprogress.org/2014/05/21/popular-patent-judge-shows-need-discovery-reform/ http://www.patentprogress.org/2014/05/21/popular-patent-judg...