Trying to decide where to file a patent case? The Northern District of Texas wants you to file there, if, of course, venue is proper.
But why would you? Well, mostly because you can be assured that, if it is filed in Dallas after September 1, 2011, it will be assigned to one of three district judges who like and want more patent cases: Judges Lynn, Kinkeade and Godbey. Not only that, these judges have experience with them and have expressed a commitment to develop uniformity in how they are handled in the district. And to top it off, they want feedback — organized, constructive and polite, of course —from the bar to make it better. In short the district appears committed to making patent cases predictable. Except for the East Texas jury pool, what else could you want?
The Northern District is one of fourteen districts recently selected to participate in a new, ten year “Patent Pilot Program” intended to enhance the expertise of district judges. The program allows for district judges within each selected district to volunteer to be designated as a patent judge. Patent cases are initially randomly assigned to one of the judges in the district. A district judge who is randomly assigned a patent case and has not volunteered to be a patent judge may decline to accept the case. That case is then randomly assigned to one of the designated patent judges.
The Northern District has taken the additional step of essentially ensuring that only the three patent judges will be assigned cases filed in at least the Dallas Division. All the judges in the Dallas Division, except for the three patent judges, have agreed to refuse to accept patent cases for at least the first year of the program. I am not aware of any other district in the Patent Pilot Program having taken this step.
Although changes to the local patent rules, which are modeled on those of the Northern District of California and the Eastern District of Texas, are not currently contemplated, Judges Lynn, Kinkeade and Godbey announced at a meeting with the Dallas Bar Association’s IP Section last week that they intend to work with each other to establish, to the extent possible, uniformity in how patent cases are handled in the district. Their answers to a number of questions submitted in advance by members of the bar more or less backed up their expressed intentions of uniformity, but they did reserve the right to maintain a few of their own quirks. More on what they said later.
We will have to wait to see if the promised uniformity results in the kind of predictability that patentees filing infringement actions typically look for. However, with the imminent retirement of Judges Ward and Folsom in the Eastern District of Texas, the increasing backlog of cases there, and a revitalized application of §1404, the timing looks good. The Northern District appears to have positioned itself as a viable alternative to the Eastern District and, dare I say, a preferred venue as compared to other districts around the country.
The Hub of IP 