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The Supreme Court Is Cracking Down on Patent Trolls (fortune.com)
The Supreme Court on Monday limited the ability of patent holders to bring infringement lawsuits in courts that have plaintiff friendly reputations, a notable decision that could provide a boost to companies that defend against patent claims. The high court, in an opinion by Justice Clarence Thomas, ruled unanimously that a lower court has been following an incorrect legal standard for almost 30 years that made it possible for patent holders to sue companies in almost any U.S. jurisdiction. From a report: The justices sided 8-0 (PDF) with beverage flavoring company TC Heartland in its legal battle with food and beverage company Kraft Heinz, ruling that patent infringement suits can be filed only in courts located in the jurisdiction where the targeted company is incorporated. Justice Neil Gorsuch did not participate in the decision. The decision overturned a ruling last year by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, a Washington-based patent court, that said patent suits are fair game anywhere a defendant company's products are sold.
>> patent infringement suits can be filed only in courts located in the jurisdiction where the targeted company is incorporated
I see a bunch of high-fiving going on in the Delaware legal community (because that's where a lot if not most of targeted companies will be incorporated). Also a lot of high-fiving in corporate legal departments, who asked their companies to (re)incorporate in Delaware to take advantage of its corporate-friendly laws.
I was involved in two patent cases (providing research rather than expert witness); both were in East Texas.
One was the Novell/Red Hat case on user interfaces, and the other was on the infamous OpenMarket patents.
One we won (the Novell/Red Hat), and the other lost (the Open Market patents, finally thrown out years later due to the efforts of New Egg.
I will note that the Novell/Red litigation was helped by the judge coming in from out of district (from the appeals court). So venue clearly mattered greatly. Don't under estimate it.
The Open Market patents were about as an egregious violation of the patent system as I can imagine. The first of the three (the original one) described the method OpenMarket used for its early shopping cart system based on URL hacking. It was obsolete the day cookies were invented (which have their own set of terrible privacy problems, something we weren't thinking about much in the early 1990's; sigh). So nobody infringed it; by the time of its issuance it was moot, as cookies made it much easier; whether there was prior art isn't clear to me, but probably; I just never found a smoking gun. The second and third patent, continued over a decade, ended up covering about half of computer science and should never have been issued due to prior art.
Thankfully, the CEO of NewEgg fought in a later case and eventually won, but not after many companies lost and were held up.
So venue matters, and fixing the patent system to not issue trash sweeping patents matter both.