[Infowarrior] - Appeals Court Tells Patent Trolls' Favorite Judge He Can't Just Ignore The Supreme Court To Keep Patent Cases In Texas

[Richard Forno]

Appeals Court Tells Patent Trolls' Favorite Judge He Can't Just Ignore The Supreme Court To Keep Patent Cases In Texas

from the not-how-it-works dept

A few weeks ago, we noted that Judge Rodney Gilstrap, a judge in East Texas who is infamous for handling approximately 25% of all patent cases in the entire country, appeared to be ignoring the Supreme Court in an effort to keep all those patent cases in his own docket. You see, earlier this year, in an important case, the Supreme Court said that the proper venue for a patent lawsuit to be brought should be where the defendant "resides" rather than just wherever they "do business." Previously, patent trolls had said that the lawsuits could be brought wherever a company did business -- which, with internet firms, meant anywhere -- allowing them to file in their favorite court in East Texas. The Supreme Court said "that's not what the law says."

But Gilstrap tried, somewhat creatively, to twist himself around those rules, by arguing that all sorts of other factors could be used to determine "residence" -- basically including (again) if you had any connection to that jurisdiction at all -- and thus continue to allow East Texas to be an acceptable venue. We listed out those factors in the earlier post, but don't need to do so again, because the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit has already weighed in and said "nope, that's not how it works."

The ruling is pretty straightforward. Basically, it says "when we say a defendant has to reside in that venue, we mean it."

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https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20170921/17090738264/appeals-court-tells-patent-trolls-favorite-judge-he-cant-just-ignore-supreme-court-to-keep-patent-cases-texas.shtml