Judge Rodney Gilstrap Sees A Quarter Of The Nation's Patent Cases (vice.com)

derekmead quotes a report from Motherboard: Since taking the bench in 2011 -- moving literally across the street from his law office into the district courthouse -- Judge Rodney Gilstrap has become one of the most influential patent litigation judges in the country. In 2015, there were 5,819 new patent cases filed in the US; 1,686 of those ended up in front of Judge Gilstrap. That's more than a quarter of all cases in the country; twice as many as the next most active patent judge. This busy patent docket didn't blossom overnight, and it's not some strange coincidence. Due to some unique rules around intellectual property filings, patent holders can often file their lawsuits at any district court in the country, even if neither the plaintiff nor the defendant is based there. By introducing a list of standing court orders and local regulations, the Eastern District of Texas (and, in particular, Gilstrap's division of Marshall) has become the court of choice for many plaintiffs, especially non-practicing entities, often referred to as patent trolls.

Comments

When I hear "oligarchy", I think "justice".

[Pseudonymous Powers]

Judge Rodney Gilstrap Sees A Quarter Of The Nation's Patent Cases

It seems like every other article I read about the patent system has people complaining about how overloaded everyone in the system is, and yet this dude is carrying a quarter of the load all by himself! So, I guess they need to hire a fourth guy?

Re:When I hear "oligarchy", I think "justice".

[Errol backfiring]

And a psychiatrist. I cannot believe that anyone who has seen that much legalese nonsense still wants to live.

Re:When I hear "oligarchy", I think "justice".

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't worry, he doesn't actually need to read anything to make his decisions. But that just raises the question of how he can sleep at night.

Re: When I hear "oligarchy", I think "justice".

[easyTree]

Yah; piles of cash probably aren't that comfy.

How much did he get in 'campaign donations'?

[guruevi]

The main issue in this country is that judges can be bought just like any other elected official. Judges having the final say over bad laws and statutes should be held to even higher standards of electoral rules than either senators or presidents. They are potentially the most powerful people in the US, interpreting laws as they see fit, if they get "donations", it colors their judgment and is no longer impartial.

Re:How much did he get in 'campaign donations'?

[Anonymous Coward]

It isn't the country, it's the fucking eastern district of Texas - know all over the world as the home of patent trolls and retarded judges that rubber-stamp anything that generates a payout.

Re:How much did he get in 'campaign donations'?

[grouse]

Federal judges are not elected and do not have campaigns.

Re:How much did he get in 'campaign donations'?

[Anonymous Coward]

Federal Judges do not need "donations" - they are appointed for life terms, to reduce the risk of corruption that you suggest. Also, if you're going to suggest that a federal judge is corrupt, you should at least have some evidence to support your claim.

Re:How much did he get in 'campaign donations'?

[GrumpySteen]

if you're going to suggest that a federal judge is corrupt, you should at least have some evidence to support your claim.

This article provides a fairly complete explanation:
https://www.techdirt.com/artic...

The judges in the Eastern Texas Division actions may not have broken any laws (it's debatable), but it would be ludicrous to suggest that defendants in patent litigation are receiving fair trials there. A judicial system that unfairly favors one side in a lawsuit is, by definition, corrupt.

Re:How much did he get in 'campaign donations'?

[Anonymous Coward]

Samsung skating rink, right across from the court. What else do you need?

Re:How much did he get in 'campaign donations'?

[quantaman]

The main issue in this country is that judges can be bought just like any other elected official. Judges having the final say over bad laws and statutes should be held to even higher standards of electoral rules than either senators or presidents. They are potentially the most powerful people in the US, interpreting laws as they see fit, if they get "donations", it colors their judgment and is no longer impartial.

Why does the judge or elected official have to be bought?

Rich donors can sway the outcomes of elections even when the candidates are incorruptible. They just find the candidate whose views are legitimately closest to their own and give them a pile of money to get elected.

But it looks like this judge isn't even elected.

Instead the problem here is that the litigants are able to shop all over the country to find the court, that simply due to random variation, gives them the best outcome and sets a bunch of favourable precedents.

If the suit can be filed anywhere in the country then the litigants shouldn't have that much say over what judge actually hears it.

Re:How much did he get in 'campaign donations'?

[geekmux]

It isn't the country, it's the fucking eastern district of Texas - know all over the world as the home of patent trolls and retarded judges that rubber-stamp anything that generates a payout.

Rubber-stamp should be a term that carries a felony shadow instead of us casually using it as if the impact is meaningless. Fuck this rubber stamp bullshit. Launch an investigation as to WHY a quarter of the cases for our entire country are routed through THIS judge and even the idiot with half a brain will get what the hell is really going on here.

It's not just shadowy corruption that pisses me off the most. It's the yeah-I'm-doing-it-fuck-you flavor of blatant corruption that is just a slap in the face to any law-abiding citizen, making everyone question why we don't start labeling it accurately as our (IL)LEGAL system.

And if you don't want to label this activity accurately as corruption, then no wonder it's in Texas. You need a state that big to warehouse this loophole.

Re:How much did he get in 'campaign donations'?

[jratcliffe]

The only way of becoming an appointed judge is by being a lower judge which is elected.

This is completely and totally untrue. Only a minority of Federal judges (none of whom are elected) were ever state or local judges prior to appointment to the Federal bench, and of those only about half were judges in courts where the judges are elected.

Re:How much did he get in 'campaign donations'?

[Archangel Michael]

Well, when you esteem judges as being arbiters of ultimate fairness, when the reality is, they are just as flawed as your average congressman and executive / president / mayor / governor, this is how you get into trouble.

Judges have carved themselves a very nice protected racket from which to enact their version of statism / tyranny. We have one person, decided by who knows what measure, cases that have long and far impacts in the form of legislating from the bench, and we're simply okay with it, because it suits our myopic political opinions.

Judges need to be held accountable, but are rarely touched because the people who know better are all part of the same Cabal and court officers, in a direct conflict of interest.

IMHO, no lawyer should be allowed to run for Legislative or Executive Branch, being already a member of the Judicial branch of government. We don't allow a congressman to also be a mayor or judge, why should lawyers (Judicial Officer) be allowed in the other two branches?

Re:How much did he get in 'campaign donations'?

[Anonymous Coward]

The problem is, it's not illegal. They are doing all kinds of perfectly legal, terribly shitty things there in the eastern district of texas. The rage should be at lawmakers who saw fit to put this kind of system in place and let it ride for so long.

Re: How much did he get in 'campaign donations'?

[easyTree]

Yep. In the UK, the equivalent is Northampton County Court - home to electronic kangaroo judges.

Re:How much did he get in 'campaign donations'?

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe the parent should have said "judges can be bought just like anyone else".

All hail our robotic patent judges!

Re: How much did he get in 'campaign donations'?

[easyTree]

Is not illegal because *drumroll* they are collectively deciding what is and isn't illegal.

Re:How much did he get in 'campaign donations'?

[Anonymous Coward]

You do realize you're not going to get an unbiased view from techdirt, right?

1) Characterizing the discovery rules as "rocket docket" and therefore burdensome to defendants overlooks the fact that the situation in every other federal court is likely to favor defendants by being unreasonably slow. I'm looking, right now, at a trial date set for mid-2017 on a patent case we filed sometime in 2012... been so long I forget. And that assumes the defendants, who have been extremely uncooperative on discovery and have just moved to add additional affirmative defenses four years into the process, don't delay things further. When someone is infringing your patents, that's a long time to hope you still have enough money to pay your lawyers.

2) Asking permission before filing Alice-or-similar motions for summary judgment on patent invalidity is not unreasonable when you have a knowledgeable patent bench. Without such a rule, everyone would file one, unreasonably taking up the court's time and delaying resolution. Myself, I think the 31% success rate on those elsewhere is likely way too high- are we really saying that the patents that make money (that is, the set of patents more likely to be carefully and expensively prosecuted) are invalid 31% of the time? Much more likely that a judge, seeing one of the handful of patent cases he or she will ever see, does not have the expertise to rule appropriately. Maybe more accurately, I mean that the judge's law clerk, seeing the only patent case that lawyer will ever deal with, has no idea how to help the judge suss out the issues.

3) Claiming a delayed motion to transfer creates an unreasonable burden requires you to believe that the discovery rules are unfair. Otherwise, you'd face the same production requirements in whatever venue you transfer to, so the time to get the case actually transferred would be irrelevant.

And there are exactly no other reasons listed in that article that support the idea that the Eastern District of Texas is corrupt. I know it's fashionable around here to bitch about it, but the number of posters with actual knowledge about the process and an open mind approaches 2.

Re:How much did he get in 'campaign donations'?

[TheGratefulNet]

at least on jury trials, judges are NOT supposed to have final say.

that's the jury's job and if they are INFORMED they'll be aware of jury nullification, where they can rule on the law, itself, on a case by case basis.

of course, if you read up on JN (fija.org) you'll see that, while its on the books as an allowed rite of the people, the courts go to extreme lengths to deny its very existence and you can be thrown in JAIL if you dare mention to fellow jurors that JN even exists. yeah, our legal system hates the fact that *people* (who are not on anyone's bribe or payroll) can override bad laws.

think long and hard about that last sentence.

Re: How much did he get in 'campaign donations'?

[easyTree]

How does a lifelong right to make closed decisions on public matters protect against corruption?

Specifically, how does it protect against a judge setting up a highest-bidder-gets-their-preferred-verdict system?

Re:How much did he get in 'campaign donations'?

[Anonymous Coward]

Jury nullification was used to free those accused of helping escaped slaves in the north, just prior to the civil war.

It was also used to free those accused of lynching and killing civil rights activists in the south, prior to the civil rights act.

It's not a magic bullet.

Re:How much did he get in 'campaign donations'?

[Theaetetus]

if you're going to suggest that a federal judge is corrupt, you should at least have some evidence to support your claim.

This article provides a fairly complete explanation: https://www.techdirt.com/artic...

The judges in the Eastern Texas Division actions may not have broken any laws (it's debatable), but it would be ludicrous to suggest that defendants in patent litigation are receiving fair trials there. A judicial system that unfairly favors one side in a lawsuit is, by definition, corrupt.

They make a big deal out of how there are 94 federal courts and yet most patent cases go to ED Texas, with a giant calculation that's entirely... irrelevant. As noted in the Slashdot headline, patent cases can be filed anywhere in the country. Criminal cases, for example, cannot, but have to be where the crime occurred (FRCP Rule 18). They also have time limits, under the Constitutional requirement for speedy trials. So, for example, if you file a patent infringement case in New York, where there's tons of crimes committed, your patent case will keep getting pushed down the docket. You might never actually get into court, because they have to handle the criminal cases first.

By contrast, nothing happens in the ED Texas. So, there's nothing on the docket to get in the way of your patent suit. TechDirt's suggestion that cases should be distributed evenly in all 94 federal courts completely ignores the fact that other cases cannot be distributed evenly. It's like saying you should load balance your webserver equally among your servers, completely ignoring the fact that one of them is also a production server operating at 99% load on another function.

Re:How much did he get in 'campaign donations'?

[macs4all]

The main issue in this country is that judges can be bought just like any other elected official. Judges having the final say over bad laws and statutes should be held to even higher standards of electoral rules than either senators or presidents. They are potentially the most powerful people in the US, interpreting laws as they see fit, if they get "donations", it colors their judgment and is no longer impartial.

And yet, they enjoy some of the most far-reaching Immunity from Civil Suit there is. Even if their motives are "impure" and you can PROVE IT.

Yeah, we never actually lost the concept of a Sovereign "King". We just divided him up into a million little Fiefdoms and Viceroys, all with essentially the same power to "do bad with impunity" that King George had so much fun with.

Re:How much did he get in 'campaign donations'?

[Anonymous Coward]

Also, if you're going to suggest that a federal judge is corrupt, you should at least have some evidence to support your claim.

US legal history demonstrates beyond a shadow of a doubt that there are massive problems with legal ethics.

It started at the beginning with the continuation of slavery, and other elements of British law that involved ethical conflict of interest on the part of the legal professional.

It has continued to the present day. A few symptoms of the underlying problem, such as slavery, have been corrected (largely due to external forces making the legal profession correct matters), but the problem remains in full force.

This couldn't happen without the judges being complicit. It is a reasonable supposition that ALL of the judges are corrupt, or at least that nobody gets selected for high judicial office that is willing to rock the boat on legal ethics issues.

This is one of the reasons why there is a great deal of cynicism with respect to the idea that the system can be fixed by working within the system.

Patent law in particular has a host of ethics problems, legal and otherwise. It's a really ugly mess, and has probably outlived its usefulness to society. We pay a horribly high price for the occasional benefit the system delivers.

The legal ethics issue has been discussed at length in other Slashdot threads, with respect to tort law, patent law, copyright law, property law, trademark law, and many other aspects of law. Unfortunately, ethics problems in law are a cancer that has spread throughout the body of law and is slowly killing the patient. Everybody in the USA pays more for products because of these problems, and they're starting to cause problems for the rest of the world as well, in our increasingly global economy.

Learn to use a search engine.

Re:How much did he get in 'campaign donations'?

[Anonymous Coward]

They can also be shot I'm guessing. Do they have guns in Texas?

Software patents are all evil

[NotInHere]

Saying that "only" patent trolls are evil is not enough. Even if you make business, then having a 20-year monopoly on things in such a fast evolving economy is just outright wrong. There is just so much push in the economy towards new inventions, it would live well without a patent system as well. In fact, it would stifle competition.

Re:Software patents are all evil

[Coren22]

So, your assertion is that if I "invent" a new way to compress files that is super effective and lossless, that I should have no right to patent that invention, and instead, the very next person that can write my algorithm into a software product should be able to entirely deprive me of income?

So, you think no one should ever make money on software?

Re: Software patents are all evil

[Type44Q]

Youre fairly new on hete, right? I ask because that topic has pretty much been settled on here a long time ago; let's just say that the support for "imaginary property," while not nonexistent, has been steadily waning for nearly twenty years; you are most definitely in the minority. Like we tell the musicians, "Want to get paid? Perform or STFU."

Re:Software patents are all evil

[NotInHere]

Often times the actual groundbreaking research for software patents which aren't trivial has been done by academics, who didn't file patents for their discoveries. The patents are done by the people who read the papers and apply that research. I think that's wrong.

Also, often people are not sure what particular software patents cover, or whether a particular technique is covered by patents, and don't want to risk being pursued offensively, so they rather license the patent than to fight in court over it.

Re: Software patents are all evil

[macs4all]

Youre fairly new on hete, right? I ask because that topic has pretty much been settled on here a long time ago; let's just say that the support for "imaginary property," while not nonexistent, has been steadily waning for nearly twenty years; you are most definitely in the minority. Like we tell the musicians, "Want to get paid? Perform or STFU."

Said the person living for free in their parents' basement.

And although you can say "Perform or STFU" to a musician (but not to their face, I'll bet!); what do you say to a software (or hardware) Developer?

While there has CERTAINLY been some abuse of Software Patents; the entire concept is not without merit.

Federal Law, Local Court ?!?

[trenien]

This is something I fail to understand with the US system.

To the best of my understanding, patents should squarely fall within the scope of inter-state commerce. As such, and even with the strictest, most conservative interpretation of the US Constitution, it feels like any case related to them ought to be treated according to Federal laws.

How come it is considered acceptable to judge such cases at a local level and thus with wildly different standards depending on which court it is presented to?

Re:Federal Law, Local Court ?!?

[jratcliffe]

This isn't a local or state court, it's a Federal District Court (the lowest level of Federal court). Even though it's referred to as the "Eastern District of Texas," it's a Federal court. It's located IN Texas, but it's not a Texas court.

Re:Federal Law, Local Court ?!?

[N7DR]

>

How come it is considered acceptable to judge such cases at a local level and thus with wildly different standards depending on which court it is presented to?

Huh? Patent cases are heard by federal courts (usually; there are other venues, such as the US International Trade Commission). Judge Gilstrap is a Federal Judge. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/....

Re:Federal Law, Local Court ?!?

[RabidReindeer]

I may be mistaken, but I do believe that he's a Federal Judge, especially since patents are granted at the Federal level. It's merely that the Federal judicial climate in East Texas is friendlier to patent trolls.

Yes, that smells. the US Government is supposed to be consistent throughout the nation, otherwise it's basically just regional government. But so far, no one seems to be doing anything about this.

Re:Federal Law, Local Court ?!?

[trenien]

Which means these so-called "Federal court" are anything but.

If they were federal and not some federal-in-name-only, they would all operate under the exact same rules.

Re:Federal Law, Local Court ?!?

[TheReaperD]

For most types of cases, the plaintiff can file either in their local district jurisdiction, the defendants local jurisdiction or, if it crosses state lines, in federal district court. Again, normally, the defendant then has the option to file a motion to change the jurisdiction if they don't like it and the judge in the case will then rule on a change of venue. Because of a "glitch" in patent litigation law (whether this "glitch" is accidental or not is another matter), the normal rules don't apply. The plaintiff can file in any district court and as such, patent trolls shopped around for the most favorable district there is. The judge is under no requirement to allow a change of venue and it appears that this judge almost never approves such a request. He's also extremely biased towards patent plaintiffs and his court receives considerable revenue from these lawsuits compounding a potential conflict of interest. In short, the whole system is broken. If you're in Europe, take note that the US government, or more to the point, our corporations, are trying to force our patent system on you using the TTIP.

Re:Federal Law, Local Court ?!?

[Anonymous Coward]

They do operate under the same rules. The problem is that humans aren't robots. If you show two humans the same set of rules you will get two interpretations of what exactly they mean.

Re:Federal Law, Local Court ?!?

[EvilSS]

Which means these so-called "Federal court" are anything but.

If they were federal and not some federal-in-name-only, they would all operate under the exact same rules.

So where do you think the federal courts should be located? DC? Canada? The Moon?

Re:Federal Law, Local Court ?!?

[jratcliffe]

They do operate under the same rules, they're all governed by the same precedent (which is typically set in the appellate courts or at SCOTUS). The concentration of patent litigation in the Eastern District of TX is an anomaly - generally, if A sues B, they have to do it either where A or B is located (i.e. if Apple sues Goldman Sachs in Federal Court, they have to file in California or New York). In the case of patent litigation, the plaintiff can argue that their rights were violated everywhere the infringing product was used, so they can, in effect, venue shop. The Eastern District was known as a place with plaintiff-friendly juries, so that attracted litigation, and things snowballed from there.

Re:Federal Law, Local Court ?!?

[trenien]

You'll note I've made no mention whatsoever of geography. I only talked of the way they work with not quite the same rules everywhere. Their actual location should be irrelevant, beside convenience.

Re:Federal Law, Local Court ?!?

[grouse]

I'm really tired of this right-wing meme. Slate did a detailed analysis of this issue, and found that while a disproportionate number of Ninth Circuit rulings were overturned by the Court, an even higher proportion from the Third and Fifth Circuits were overturned. Out of 6,387 on-the-merits decisions in 2006, the Supreme Court reversed 18. That's less than 0.3 percent of their on-the-merits decisions (and, of course, an even smaller proportion of the total Ninth Circuit decisions).

The likelihood of any given Ninth Circuit decision being overturned is vanishingly small.

Re:Federal Law, Local Court ?!?

[Registered Coward v2]

You'll note I've made no mention whatsoever of geography. I only talked of the way they work with not quite the same rules everywhere. Their actual location should be irrelevant, beside convenience.

They do operate under the same rules; but often their interpretation is different. Thus, different districts can operate under different precedents until a higher court issues a ruling; which then binds them to follow the precedent set by the higher court.

Re:Federal Law, Local Court ?!?

[Solandri]

Wow, that's a shockingly egregious example of how to mis-use statistics.

The "analysis" looked at such a short time period, there were only 64 cases the SCotUS took appeals from a U.S. Court of Appeals. Just by pure chance alone, you'd expect a 12.5% variance in their decisions (that is, whether a case where the SCotUS or USCoA would disagree or agree came up by random chance). The variance is even higher for the individual Federal Courts. The SCotUS only reviewed 24 cases from the 9th USCoA, so the expected random variance is 20%. That is, the 9th Circuit Court's reversal rate was 90.5% +/- 20%. By giving percentages to one decimal place, the article gives the impression that it's doing a precise statistical analysis with 3 significant figures of accuracy, when in truth there's less than one significant figure of precision here.

The analysis doesn't provide raw data for the 3rd and 5th Circuit Court cases so I can't calculate proper variances. But the remaining SCotUS cases (73 - 24 = 49) divided over the remaining 11 Circuit Courts (49 / 11 = 4.45 per Court) gives a best case variance of 47%. If a Circuit Court got fewer than 4.45 cases, its random variance would be even bigger. The uncertainty due to just random chance for this sample size is bigger than the difference from the 9th Circuit's overturn rate, meaning these numbers don't show anything. If the author had turned this article in as his homework for a statistics course, he would've gotten an F.

To demonstrate a trend (or lack of one) with statistics, you need a large enough sample to eliminate random variance. That's why statistical fields like drug approval studies, epidemiology, etc. are so difficult, slow, and expensive. You need a minimum sample on the order of 400-1000 to really start proving a statistical trend is emerging. This article is just some guy punching numbers into his calculator, hitting the % button, and is happy they (randomly) came out the way he wanted so he published them.

Re:Federal Law, Local Court ?!?

[EvilSS]

You'll note I've made no mention whatsoever of geography. I only talked of the way they work with not quite the same rules everywhere. Their actual location should be irrelevant, beside convenience.

Yes, you did:

How come it is considered acceptable to judge such cases at a local level and thus with wildly different standards depending on which court it is presented to?

Then when pointed out that the court was just located in Texas, not a court of the state of Texas you said:

Which means these so-called "Federal court" are anything but.

They do work under the same rules but each district can set precedence and it's up to higher courts to resolve conflicts, but they do operate under the same laws as every other federal court.

Re:Federal Law, Local Court ?!?

[Archangel Michael]

The problem is that humans aren't robots.

No, people are flawed. And yet we esteem these often very flawed people simply because the have "judge" (or Congressman, or President) simply because of the title in front of their name, rather than esteeming everyone equally.

Re:Federal Law, Local Court ?!?

[Anonymous Coward]

You're looking at jurisdiction all wrong.

The plaintiff may file only where the defendant is subject to the court's jurisdiction. Only where the defendant has "minimum contacts" with the forum is it constitutionally permissible to proceed. If I ate a bad burrito in some hole-in-the-wall in the Eastern District of Texas, that's pretty much the only place I'll be able to sue.

There is no glitch in patent litigation law: if there were a patent on that bad burrito, I'd still be stuck there. If McDonalds infringes my patent, though, they're likely doing so all over the country, with the required minimum contacts in every district, so I'll get my choice. But if they had no restaurants in Alaska, I'd be hard pressed to hale them into court there.

Re:Federal Law, Local Court ?!?

[Hognoxious]

I'm confused. If these are federal courts, why don't they operate to the same, federal, standards? And what's the higher court that you're referring to? Is there like two levels of federalousnessity?

Re:Federal Law, Local Court ?!?

[macs4all]

They do operate under the same rules. The problem is that humans aren't robots. If you show two humans the same set of rules you will get two interpretations of what exactly they mean.

Actually, I believe each of the District Courts has "Local Rules", too.

Yep, in fact they not only have Local Rules, but they (no surprise) even have Local PATENT Rules! Three guesses as to who APPROVES THEM...

Re:Federal Law, Local Court ?!?

[EvilSS]

I am going to assume you are not a US Citizen, or are and just failed all your Civics classes. This video should help explain it.

Re:Federal Law, Local Court ?!?

[Hognoxious]

I'm going to assume you're a fat cunt.

Patent Troll Wars

[TheReaperD]

So basically, he's the general in the patent troll wars. He's not some neutral party or else patent trolls wouldn't be lining up around the block to have their cases heard in his courtroom.

Re:Patent Troll Wars

[abies]

Patent Troll Wars, DLC for Total War: Warhammer where forces of Games Workshop fight with Blizzard?

Qualifications?

[Anonymous Coward]

Does this guy read each patent and make intelligent and informed rulings on each one? Does he research each topic and identify the merits of each patent and decide whether the original patent is in fact patent worthy... if each patent is valid... or whether information provided by opposition to the patent is actually correct?

If he does, how exactly did he establish such a massive and vast array of knowledge that would allow him to perform his job effectively whether he's evaluating patents on metallurgy, computer science, signal processing, or chemistry for example?

Should this even be allowed? I don't care if there's a backlog on the system so long as the job is done right. This guy seems like a scam.

Re:Qualifications?

[Kierthos]

Well, while the summary says all those cases ended up in front of him, it doesn't say how many of them were for one hearing where it went something like "Your Honor, both sides in this case have reached an agreement we can live with."

I mean, yeah, a lot of these cases are patent trolls. But other cases could be legitimate patent issues between two companies. And you can't sue someone and then just go "Nah, forget all about it" without informing the judge if it's already gotten that far.

Re:Qualifications?

[NotInHere]

I mean, yeah, a lot of these cases are patent trolls. But other cases could be legitimate patent issues between two companies.

Can you explain me the difference?

So if you are a company that tries to kill a cheaper competitor by demanding high fees from them because of 'we invented it first' then that's better than a company that focuses in research? And where do you make the difference? Its not apple which manufactures the iphones, its a completely different company. Apple did a contract with that company, but where again, is the difference between foxconn doing a contract with apple, or doing a contract with an alleged "patent troll"?

Both of them "did all the research" haven't they?

Re:Qualifications?

[Kierthos]

A legitimate patent issue would be where Company A is using one of Company B's patents without licensing it from B.

Now, could it be argued that B's patent is invalid because of prior art, or that B really doesn't own the patent, or any number of other reasons? Yes. That's what you do IN FRONT OF THE JUDGE.

But a patent case does not automatically mean a patent troll is involved.

Re:Qualifications?

[Anonymous Coward]

Look. I'm a patent lawyer, I have been involved with cases in front of Gilstrap. Although the rules in Texas are definitely slanted towards Patent Owners, its not as though Gilstrap is a complete shill for trolls. He is relatively fair, and will definitely slap down trolls when necessary. In fact, he recently invalidated a patent in a case I was working on. So I wouldn't call Gilstrap a scam, I think he tries to be fair.

Re:Qualifications?

[twmcneil]

While I agree with your point that neither the summary or the TFA go into much detail as to the resolutions or outcomes of all this litigation, I would suggest that he probably sees very, very few legitimate patent cases.

One does not go to the Eastern District of Texas for legitimate reasons. One goes there to have their trollish behavior approved and supported with a rubber stamp.

Re:Qualifications?

[Anonymous Coward]

Shhh!! We don't want to hear from people that actually know things about this stuff, we prefer to have people unaware of the details that reason through things in a way that supports our initial ideas about how patents are evil, that only patent trolls sue, and anyone associated with the system is evil and corrupt.

Re:Qualifications?

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm a patent lawyer too, and I've been in front of him too. I've also seen GP hand him a fat envelope under the table in the bar down the street.

Re:Qualifications?

[Anonymous Coward]

Bullshit. There's no fucking way. Forget for a second how utterly insane it would be for a federal judge to accept a bribe in public.

If there were a shred of truth to this, you're just showing you're just as corrupt. Texas, like every other jurisdiction, has mandatory reporting rules for its attorneys for stuff like this. Why didn't you report it?

what we arent being told.

[nimbius]

Ronnie Gilstrap is actually a huge inside joke perpetuated across multiple state and local governments. The idea being that a single random litigator, Ronnie, is suddenly and without any adequate explanation forced to spend his entire career presiding over cases he cant possibly comprehend for clients with more money than god.

Imagine it. a man in texas who gets out of bed every morning, wipes his ass, kisses his wife, and then has to sit in a robe all day furiously trying to comprehend what the fuck a phone gesture is and why it gets a patent. Or mild mannered Ronnie, walking through the front door of a grueling day of court cases, only to sit at the dinner table in front of his mashed taytos and chicken fried chicken unable to eat a bite, as hes crucified by the sorrowful fact that he just spent the entire week hearing two people argue over the semantics between a click, a swipe, and a swish.

Re:what we arent being told.

[Anonymous Coward]

Start here and read to the end.

United States of Rubber Stamping

[ThatsNotPudding]

From shit patents to unjustifiable state surveillance.

God Bless America!!

Obama's choice

[gtall]

President Obama nominated him for this position. I think we must ask why the Obama Administration is happy with such a lenient judge for patent trolls.

Nothing ever changes here.

[westlake]

The main issue in this country is that judges can be bought just like any other elected official. Judges having the final say over bad laws and statutes should be held to even higher standards of electoral rules than either senators or presidents.

Total ignorance of how the US federal system works.

Federal judges are appointed by the President, confirmed by the Senate and serve for life.

Bribery as the geek's all-purpose explanation for any legal or political decision he disagrees with. In our entire history only four federal judges have been impeached and convicted on bribery-related charges. Impeachments of Federal Judges

The geek can still wonder why no one ever takes him seriously as force in politics. Donald Trump without the hair or the ability to incite the masses.

Re:Nothing ever changes here.

[TheGratefulNet]

lets see, certainly judges that take bribes are mostly smart enough to NOT get caught.

but by your thinking, we can simply count the # that were too stupid to avoid getting caught and that's a number you trot out as 'proof'.

I wonder if you see the flaw in your thinking, here?

If you bar sale of a product in this district?

[swb]

Let's say your a product maker and you decide to prohibit the sale of your product in the geographical area of the Eastern District of Texas -- a contractual agreement with every buyer that says this product may not be made available to any customer residing within this district. And you went the extra mile to actually enforce it, secret shopping resellers to make sure they were enforcing this provision and enforcing contract terms than penalized it, and all the various documentation that says you don't sell it there and are willing to cut off customers who defy this contract.

Would you be able to claim exemption from a case filed in this district, since you could say that any litigant had not experienced harm in that district due to the lack of availability of the product in question?

Re:If you bar sale of a product in this district?

[jratcliffe]

I would imagine that you could. In practice, it would be essentially impossible to enforce, but if you could somehow do it, then I don't see why it wouldn't remove the case from the district's purview...

Re:If you bar sale of a product in this district?

[swb]

I'm not sure you'd have to do more than contractually prohibit sale and make some kind of token effort at enforcing flagrant violations.

What would be amusing is if major IP holders actually made an effort to embargo sales in that district on purpose. One, the court would lose influence, and two, the morons that live there might pressure their elected representatives to not have a kangaroo court.

Re:If you bar sale of a product in this district?

[jratcliffe]

One, the court would lose influence, and two, the morons that live there might pressure their elected representatives to not have a kangaroo court.

The "morons" that live there don't really have a say in the matter - it's a Federal court.

Re:If you bar sale of a product in this district?

[swb]

The congressional delegations of a given state traditionally have a lot of influence over appointments to their Federal courts.

The Defendant Pleads...

[JohnPerkins]

Not Gilstrap!

Re:The Defendant Pleads...

[Anonymous Coward]

Priceless! ...wish could mod up!

Support VENUE Act and get me laid off

[Anonymous Coward]

The VENUE Act is pending before the Senate. It will make it very difficult for trolls to sue in E.D. Texas, and will therefore likely shut it down as a troll haven. U.S. folks: tell your congressperson you support S. 2733. See also https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2016/03/tell-senate-pass-venue-act.

This simple procedural bug fix won't solve everything that is wrong with our patent system, but it would likely have a major impact.

Put me out of a job. Seriously. Defending patent cases in Texas is awful. I will figure out something else to do. Florist, maybe.

Best regards,
Anonymous, Cowardly Patent Litigator Who Wants To Stop Practicing In Texas.

Re: Support VENUE Act and get me laid off

[Anonymous Coward]

Why shouldn't you be able to sue in a district where the infringement is taking place?

You have to shred a few million...

[Dareth]

You have to shred a few million...to get that warm and comfy filling in a good mattress.

Re: You have to shred a few million...

[easyTree]

Which gives better support, shredded cash or shredded constitution? Maybe a mix.

movetoamend.org

[dbreeze]

http://movetoamend.org/ Do something about this crap. Add your name to a good start...

Specialization

[Anonymous Coward]

East Texas has few federal crimes, and Texas Instruments Inc. is nearby. The judges in East Texas district court effectively specialize in handling patents, which can allow for faster, and cheaper, cases. It's less work for the other district courts, whom deal primarily with criminal cases. Those judges probably don't know much about technical issues anyway. Doing tech support can be a painful form of education. And if East Texas screws up, it can go to an appeals court.