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"The judge is constrained by long-established rules. Article III of the U.S. Constitution limits the power of the federal courts to actual cases and controversi

"The judge is constrained by long-established rules. Article III of the U.S. Constitution limits the power of the federal courts to actual cases and controversies." Even if that was the case, assuming nothing bad is going on, there has to be a reason all these cases end up there. It's too frequent to be a coincidence.

ngoldbaum 13y ago
The wikipedia article for the Eastern district Federal court gives a good summary without appealing to anything nefarious: Most recently, the Eastern District of Texas has seen an increase in the number of cases filed relating to patent infringement. This District has experienced an increase in the number of patent cases filed and tried, notably in the courts of Judge T. John Ward in the Marshall Division, Judge Leonard Davis in the Tyler Division, and Judge David Folsom in the Texarkana Division. Perhaps because the district has a set of local rules for patent cases and relatively fast trial settings, patent plaintiffs have flocked to this small venue. In addition the proximity to larger cities (such as Dallas and Houston) along with an aging jury pool interested in protecting property rights, may attract patent cases to Marshall, Tyler, and Texarkana. [1] Basically, the judges tend to be friendly to plaintiffs (as is their right as duly appointed federal judges) and the jury pool tend to be in favor of patents and strong property rights. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_District_Court_for_the_Eastern_District_of_Texas http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_District_Court_fo...
- cobrausn 13y ago
  You... managed to completely ignore the 'fast trial settings' in your TL;DR. From the perspective of a law firm, this saves an incredible amount of time and money.
dctoedt 13y ago
> Even if that was the case, assuming nothing bad is going on, there has to be a reason all these cases end up there. It's too frequent to be a coincidence. Fifteen-plus years ago the Eastern District of Texas developed a reputation as a good place to litigate patent cases because at the time it was a fast docket (not so much any more, because of all the patent cases being filed there) and the judges there have come to know patent law pretty well, which is welcomed by lawyers for both sides. In a 2010 article, Stanford law professor Mark Lemley, who is known for his careful statistical analysis of patent cases (and is cited amazingly often by the Supreme Court), noted that the win rate for patent owners in the Eastern District was 40% [1]. In a 2013 article, Lemley concluded that "... the patent sophistication of the jury pool had no statistically significant effect on trial outcomes." [2] [1] http://amlawdaily.typepad.com/Lemley.pdf http://amlawdaily.typepad.com/Lemley.pdf [2] http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2217690 http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2217690, page 177, text accompanying note 24.
- mistercow 13y ago
  >In a 2010 article, Stanford law professor Mark Lemley, who is known for his careful statistical analysis of patent cases (and is cited amazingly often by the Supreme Court), noted that the win rate for patent owners in the Eastern District was 40% That statistic is meaningless without the base rate, which turns out to be 32.5%. I'd also point out that there's something very weaselly about Lemley saying the district "is not in the top five", when what he really means is "it's the sixth most". It's technically true, but looking at N and saying "greater than N - 1" is a way of increasing the rhetorical impact of a figure without actually lying about it. It implies that N could fall anywhere over that threshold, when in fact you've picked the threshold right under N. Perhaps a more objective way to say it would be to say that the Eastern District of Texas's patent win rate is in the 81st percentile.
  - VLM 13y ago
    My strategic advice would be to research the shape of a graph of all states; is there anything peculiar about Texas? It might be possible to change the locale without changing the outcome. A similar analogy would be declaring poverty to be the bottom quartile of financial resources, then being surprised that as long as more than 5 people exist we'll always have a bottom quartile therefore always poverty. What I'm getting at is there may be nothing special about TX at all, there always will be an 81st percentile of course. For example if we sell TX back to .mx, perhaps in exchange for oil or something, then obviously TX would cease to be the 81st percentile but some place else would become the 81st percentile, probably with no real change in the situation other than where the bizjets fly to. Or maybe TX is corrupt as heck but no one knows it... why TX? Everyone knows Chicago is super corrupt, NYC is super corrupt, N.O. is somewhat corrupt, the whole state of Louisiana is corrupt, the whole state of Alaska is corrupt, the whole state of Illinois is corrupt... so why bypass those probably more fertile grounds for ... Texas of all places? On the big list of cities and states with proven documented corruption problems, east texas never seems to make it very high on the list. IF I were a crook who wanted to hang out with crooks, I see no reason to go to rural TX if I could simply go to Chicago with likely better results, for example. I mean, haven't the last three governors of Illinois gone to prison on corruption charges? It would appear if you're looking for crooks you'd go to IL not TX, but the trolls don't, which is weird.

ngoldbaum 13y ago

The wikipedia article for the Eastern district Federal court gives a good summary without appealing to anything nefarious: Most recently, the Eastern District of Texas has seen an increase in the number of cases filed relating to patent infringement. This District has experienced an increase in the number of patent cases filed and tried, notably in the courts of Judge T. John Ward in the Marshall Division, Judge Leonard Davis in the Tyler Division, and Judge David Folsom in the Texarkana Division. Perhaps because the district has a set of local rules for patent cases and relatively fast trial settings, patent plaintiffs have flocked to this small venue. In addition the proximity to larger cities (such as Dallas and Houston) along with an aging jury pool interested in protecting property rights, may attract patent cases to Marshall, Tyler, and Texarkana. [1] Basically, the judges tend to be friendly to plaintiffs (as is their right as duly appointed federal judges) and the jury pool tend to be in favor of patents and strong property rights. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_District_Court_for_the_Eastern_District_of_Texas http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_District_Court_fo...

cobrausn 13y ago
You... managed to completely ignore the 'fast trial settings' in your TL;DR. From the perspective of a law firm, this saves an incredible amount of time and money.

dctoedt 13y ago

> Even if that was the case, assuming nothing bad is going on, there has to be a reason all these cases end up there. It's too frequent to be a coincidence. Fifteen-plus years ago the Eastern District of Texas developed a reputation as a good place to litigate patent cases because at the time it was a fast docket (not so much any more, because of all the patent cases being filed there) and the judges there have come to know patent law pretty well, which is welcomed by lawyers for both sides. In a 2010 article, Stanford law professor Mark Lemley, who is known for his careful statistical analysis of patent cases (and is cited amazingly often by the Supreme Court), noted that the win rate for patent owners in the Eastern District was 40% [1]. In a 2013 article, Lemley concluded that "... the patent sophistication of the jury pool had no statistically significant effect on trial outcomes." [2] [1] http://amlawdaily.typepad.com/Lemley.pdf http://amlawdaily.typepad.com/Lemley.pdf [2] http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2217690 http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2217690, page 177, text accompanying note 24.

mistercow 13y ago
>In a 2010 article, Stanford law professor Mark Lemley, who is known for his careful statistical analysis of patent cases (and is cited amazingly often by the Supreme Court), noted that the win rate for patent owners in the Eastern District was 40% That statistic is meaningless without the base rate, which turns out to be 32.5%. I'd also point out that there's something very weaselly about Lemley saying the district "is not in the top five", when what he really means is "it's the sixth most". It's technically true, but looking at N and saying "greater than N - 1" is a way of increasing the rhetorical impact of a figure without actually lying about it. It implies that N could fall anywhere over that threshold, when in fact you've picked the threshold right under N. Perhaps a more objective way to say it would be to say that the Eastern District of Texas's patent win rate is in the 81st percentile.
- VLM 13y ago
  My strategic advice would be to research the shape of a graph of all states; is there anything peculiar about Texas? It might be possible to change the locale without changing the outcome. A similar analogy would be declaring poverty to be the bottom quartile of financial resources, then being surprised that as long as more than 5 people exist we'll always have a bottom quartile therefore always poverty. What I'm getting at is there may be nothing special about TX at all, there always will be an 81st percentile of course. For example if we sell TX back to .mx, perhaps in exchange for oil or something, then obviously TX would cease to be the 81st percentile but some place else would become the 81st percentile, probably with no real change in the situation other than where the bizjets fly to. Or maybe TX is corrupt as heck but no one knows it... why TX? Everyone knows Chicago is super corrupt, NYC is super corrupt, N.O. is somewhat corrupt, the whole state of Louisiana is corrupt, the whole state of Alaska is corrupt, the whole state of Illinois is corrupt... so why bypass those probably more fertile grounds for ... Texas of all places? On the big list of cities and states with proven documented corruption problems, east texas never seems to make it very high on the list. IF I were a crook who wanted to hang out with crooks, I see no reason to go to rural TX if I could simply go to Chicago with likely better results, for example. I mean, haven't the last three governors of Illinois gone to prison on corruption charges? It would appear if you're looking for crooks you'd go to IL not TX, but the trolls don't, which is weird.