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Apple To Close Retail Stores In the Patent Troll-Favored Eastern District of Texas (techcrunch.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: Apple has confirmed its plans to close retail stores in the Eastern District of Texas -- a move that will allow the company to better protect itself from patent infringement lawsuits, according to Apple news sites 9to5Mac and MacRumors which broke the news of the stores' closures. Apple says that the impacted retail employees will be offered new jobs with the company as a result of these changes. The company will shut down its Apple Willow Bend store in Plano, Texas as well as its Apple Stonebriar store in Frisco, Texas, MacRumors reported, and Apple confirmed. These stores will permanently close up shop on Friday, April 12. Customers in the region will instead be served by a new Apple store located at the Galleria Dallas Shopping Mall, which is expected to open April 13. "The Eastern District of Texas had become a popular place for patent trolls to file their lawsuits, though a more recent Supreme Court ruling has attempted to crack down on the practice," the report adds. "The court ruled that patent holders could no longer choose where to file." One of the most infamous patent holding firms is VirnetX, which has won several big patent cases against Apple in recent years.
A spokesperson for Apple confirmed the stores' closures, but wouldn't comment on the company's reasoning: "We're making a major investment in our stores in Texas, including significant upgrades to NorthPark Center, Southlake and Knox Street. With a new Dallas store coming to the Dallas Galleria this April, we've made the decision to consolidate stores and close Apple Stonebriar and Apple Willow Bend. All employees from those stores will be offered positions at the new Dallas store or other Apple locations."
A spokesperson for Apple confirmed the stores' closures, but wouldn't comment on the company's reasoning: "We're making a major investment in our stores in Texas, including significant upgrades to NorthPark Center, Southlake and Knox Street. With a new Dallas store coming to the Dallas Galleria this April, we've made the decision to consolidate stores and close Apple Stonebriar and Apple Willow Bend. All employees from those stores will be offered positions at the new Dallas store or other Apple locations."
Just a reminder that Apple literally patented rounded corners.
They really need to shut up about patents and pay what they owe to people who invent actual technology (and not things like rounded corners or buttons that are indistinguishable from text).
The SCOTUS case TC Heartland vs Kraft of 2017 ruled that patent litigants can no longer "forum shop" for jurisdictions that are friendly to their case, they can only file patent infringement cases in jurisdictions where the defendant has a physical presence. This ruling was aimed squarely at non-practicing entities (the polite term for "patent trolls") who almost unilaterally selected East Texas district or Delaware to file their infringement cases.
Apple won't admit it, but the closure of the stores in the East Texas district was a strategic legal move to exploit the SCOTUS precedent and shield themselves from the patent courts that are all too well known to rule in favor for patent litigants - and for the patent trolls Apple is currently battling.
Eternity: will that be smoking, or non-smoking? I Corinthians 6:9-10
Patent trials are relatively rare, and held in normal courts. Consequently the typical judge who gets assigned to a patent case only has to deal with a small percentage of patent cases in his/her career, so isn't well-versed in patent law. The East Texas district court realized that since there was no requirement in patent law that the case be filed in a local court, that there would be a demand for a court where the judges were well-versed in patent law. They set out to make themselves that court, as a way to increase their workload and thus revenue.
Their rationale (patent trial judges should be specialized in patent law) was fine, even admirable. But their motivation (increase revenue) created a corrupting feedback loop. The more cases their judges decided in favor of patent trolls, the more patent trolls chose to file in their district, and the more revenue the court got.