The Western District of Texas maintained its status as the country’s top patent court in 2021, but all signals indicate that a change is coming for a considerable number of patent cases in 2022. The question is: Will Congress force that change, or will the federal courts lead the charge themselves?
Substantial calls were made in 2021 to address concerns of venue- and judge-shopping in patent litigation, spurred by practices in W.D. Texas that place the vast majority of its patent cases (and nearly a quarter of patent cases nationwide) in the hands of a single judge. How these concerns ...