This is great news. Republicans are blocking all of Obama's nominations so it will take a while to even replace this guy (there are currently 109 vacancies in federal courts). The more overloaded and clogged up the courts are the harder it is for trolls to do real damage, especially now that they've lost their go-to guy.
I'm fascinated by their argument that the court is fair because plaintiff and defendant wins were about even now. I know nothing about the caseload, but does that make any sense?
If his district is seen as plaintiff-friendly, then those with the weakest cases would have the strongest incentive to file there. And I would expect patent trolls to be high-volume filers because their targets would be more likely to flip the bird during negotiations.
So I wouldn't a priori expect 50/50 outcomes to be a sign of fairness. Depending on caseload, I'd expect that as a sign of pro-plaintiff bias. If I'm a troll filing a lot of claims, 50/50 outcomes sounds like a reason to file as many as possible.
In a perfectly fair court, plaintiffs would win the majority of patent cases, for the simple reason that it is plaintiffs who make the decision to file, and even after they file suit they can dismiss the suit at any time and settle. Hence, many cases that would be losers for the plaintiff won't even make it to court--the patent owner's strategy with a weak patent is to go for licensing deals and avoid trials.
Not to mention that the whole patent system is stacked to produce settlements, because winning (to say nothing of losing) is so much more expensive. A tiny fraction of cases actually go to trial.
I spent most of 2007 in Judge Ward's court room, all I can say is if you have never been a part of one the patent cases involving him you have missed out on quite a bit of humor.
Though he was known for being plaintiff friendly I can happily say we came out on the other side of a few of his judgements and I have known him to be mostly fair given the proper arguments. Sadly, the trolls win all too often because more often than not they have more money than the guy they are suing, good attorneys do not come cheap and the patent trolls do not mind paying for them
As far as the Techdirt story goes, there is nothing to investigate since he did nothing even remotely wrong. Techdirt, as usual when they cover legal matters, pretty much completely botched their reporting. See the earlier HN discussion for details.
