Supreme Court May Take Its Chance To End Forum Shopping

Before closing up shop for the holidays, the Supreme Court issued a short order which, among other things, granted the cert. petition filed in TC Heartland LLC v. Kraft Foods Group Brands, LLC. By taking this case, the Court has given hope to those of us concerned about forum shopping, and the over–concentration of patent...

FTC Issues Long–Awaited Patent Troll Study

The Federal Trade Commission today announced the publication of its formal study of the problem of patent trolls—which the Commission more politely refers to as “patent assertion entities” or “PAEs.” Using its investigative authority, the Commission examined non–public information for 2009–2014 from 22 PAEs, 327 PAE affiliates, and 2,100 holding entities. The FTC divided the...

Accused Infringer Succeeds In Justifying Fee Award, Then Fails To Prove Fees

In the latest twist in the saga of the Webvention patent litigation, Novartis has been denied its attorneys’ fees after having demonstrated that it was entitled to them. You can read the back–story here. (As noted there, our firm was involved in this case once upon a time, but not lately.) The sequel brings a...

When You *Can* Say It Any Plainer Than That

One of the peculiar features of most patent litigation—and one reason it is so expensive—is the process of claim construction. The courts have decided that disputes over the language of patent claims must be decided by the trial judge because they are “questions of law” not “questions of fact.” And that has come to mean...

Timing Is Everything: Alice in East Texas (Again)

Well, we warned you that Alice v. CLS Bank was going to remain a hot topic in 2016. Two more data points to support that theory have emerged, each of which, in a different way, relates to the proper timing of a judicial decision on the legal question of whether a patent’s claims are written...

New Year’s Grab Bag: Old Topics and Young Lawyers

Welcome to 2016! By all accounts, 2015 was a banner year: For patent litigation—the second–highest number of patent lawsuits ever were filed in 2015 (just behind 2013); For patent trolls, which accounted for two–thirds of those new lawsuits, up from 2014; And for the Eastern District of Texas, in which 44% of all new patent...

Happy Federal Rules Amendments Day

If there was an advent calendar for federal civil litigators—and why would there be—opening the window on December 1, 2015, would reveal a brand–new—or, at least, significantly amended—set of Federal Rules of Civil Procedure. We’ve previewed the key amendments most immediately relevant to patent litigation—in with a new discovery regime in which discovery must be...

Eastern District of Texas Stands Alone As Venue For Patent Lawsuits

It is no secret that patent litigation has been concentrated in less than a handful of the 90–plus federal judicial districts in the United States for a number of years. In 2012—after the America Invents Act put in place the current rule that a plaintiff cannot sue unrelated defendants for infringing the same patent in...

Patent Litigation Doing Just Fine, Especially In Texas

After several years of steady increase in the number of new patent lawsuits filed, 2014 saw a notable decline in the number of new patent suits from 6,082 in 2013 to 5,012 in 2014. Some, such as Gene Quinn of IP Watchdog, saw this 1,000–case decline as evidence that the patent reform enacted in 2011...

Independence Day Round–Up

A post–4th–of–July review of recent developments in patent litigation: Supreme Court declares independence from patent cases. As the Supreme Court closed out a memorable 2014 term, we note that the Court has not accepted any patent cases for its 2015 term. Although there are a few cert. petitions percolating, it appears that patent law will...