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.

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'?

[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'?

[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'?

[easyTree]

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

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 ?!?

[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 ?!?

[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 ?!?

[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 ?!?

[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.

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.

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.

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?