Perhaps someone who knows more about the legal system can help me understand something: at this point, it's well-known that these areas of Texas are good for patent disputes: they receive national attention, and a massive influx of spending as companies travel there to fight court battles.
Given that, surely any jury made up of locals has a huge incentive not to kill the golden goose and deter patent trolling by letting defendants win. Is there not a conflict of interest here?
I have no special legal knowledge, but I spent several years within spitting distance of this district, so I know the area, was in the jury pool, and as far as I know might still be close enough to be called as a juror.
Based on that experience, I am inclined to disagree with your general premise. While these lawsuits bring a tiny bit of additional business to directly-related service industries (hotels, copy shops) my observation is that most of the "big money" stays within the legal industry, which is mostly based in the home locations of wherever these companies are. It is further my observation that the East District Court is not unusual in the kind of business that it brings to the surrounding area relative to other district courts (e.g., if not patent lawsuits, other suits) so there isn't much of a desire to protect its reputation as a patent court.
Finally while these stories do receive "national attention", this is pretty much entirely within the software development community, and patent lawyers. Ordinary people in East Texas don't follow any stories about patent lawsuits ever. They're boring.
Here's a benchmark for you: I am a software developer, who lobbied my congressman about patent law earlier this month, and on the day this lawsuit was filed, I was 45 minutes from the court by car. I am the textbook case of a person who would be following this story. Today is the first day I have ever heard anything about it.
There are actually other districts that have higher win rates for patent trolls. One attorney told me that people use EDT simply because that district has built up a fair amount of knowledge and experience in this area of law, and thus the cases are cheaper to fight there. I don't know this to be true, this is just what I've heard.
> There are actually other districts that have higher win rates for patent trolls.
This would be a good point if patent cases were randomly assigned to districts. But they're not, of course - EDT courts are stuffed full of BS patent troll cases. So of course the patent suit win rate is lower there. It's still famously friendly to patent plaintiffs.
Patent trolls like EDT because it's a "rocket docket". EDT judges speed up the process and it forces the defendants to play catch up. They can't spend as much time doing research on the patents. A shorter trial also limits the up-front costs for the patent trolls
If they've built up knowledge and experience, they ought to prove it by rendering verdicts that make sense. Maybe it's just a case of confirmation bias on my part, but it feels like they've got their heads firmly lodged up their asses over there.
this. It's not the win rate per se, it's the fact that the District Court judges and clerks are unusually experienced in IP litigation. You have to understand that in other districts the judges are doing federal criminal matters, civil class actions, debt collection abuse litigation, admiralty law (any slip and fall on a cruise ship is a federal lawsuit) and so on.
In ED Texas, the clerks all have hard-science undergrad (and sometimes graduate) degrees as well as degrees from top law schools because this is a major leagues of IP litigation. Want a guaranteed six figure income as a 26 year old? Clerk for two years in Marshall, then send your resume to Cooley or Wilson Sonsini or Loeb & Loeb and see how fast they return your call.
This is miles and miles beyond most lawyers, who struggle with basic math and still use dictaphones and WordPerfect and aol.com email addresses.
This also means that the litigation goes faster, which is always something that clients complain about. Win or lose, you want the dispute resolved.
A well-informed jury about the topic at hand is bad for one party of a lawsuit. It's better that a jury is a blank slate so that the lawyers can attempt to convince them their story is the one, true story in the debate. It's why during jury selection they often actively attempt to find a juror that knows nothing about the topic or carries no opinion about it.
Of course, that's not necessarily true across the board. Sometimes one side does want people that know the topic and have an opinion about it but I bet those are mostly criminal cases.
Plus, to me anyway, if the juries did actually have this supposed high-level of knowledge and experience then the results would be more balanced. Because there's no way you can tell me that nearly every single patent troll out there is in the right with these cases. More of these patents should be tossed out for the silliness that they represent.
Lawyers do their best to get into courts and before judges they feel will be sympathetic to their case. To do otherwise is a disservice to their client.
Given that, surely any jury made up of locals has a huge incentive not to kill the golden goose and deter patent trolling by letting defendants win. Is there not a conflict of interest here?