EE Times: SCOTUS Ends Texas Patent Craze, Thomas King, May 31, 2017 -- The Supreme Court struck a death blow to East Texas as a major patent litigation forum in a decision that could see patent filings overall decrease.
East Texas is known throughout the world as the major hub of U.S. patent litigation. Over the last twenty years, thousands of companies and tens of thousands of lawyers have travelled to remote towns in Eastern Texas, where they attempt to resolve patent disputes, both large and small. But nearly all of these cases carried an obvious problem—they had little or nothing to do with East Texas.
Over the years, many patent defendants argued that it was unfair to have their disputes in places with no connection to the underlying dispute. However, those arguments generally fell on deaf ears, as the East Texas judges usually refused to transfer their cases to more convenient places. Eventually, between 35-40% of all patent cases were being filed in East Texas. At this point, the Supreme Court, perhaps seeing a problem that would not solve itself, decided to act.
Excerpted from EE Times. To read the full article, click here.