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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."
A corprashun doing what it wants despite what the good ol' boys say! That's cormanissum!
Oh wait.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
where the judges and local lawyers (extended family based corruption) are running a buy your court ruling scam for patent trolls.
;)
Anything coming out of the Eastern District of Texas related to patents should be viewed with suspicion.
Just my 2 cents
Texas is currently a red shithole to use Trump's vernacular. But the scales are tipping inexorably to the left over time. Won't be long before it's blue and bullshit like this gets cleaned up.
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.
The patent trolls here are literally ***buying*** the courts and the politicians are looking the other way.
Mike @ The Geek Pub. Let's Make Stuff!
F*ck the Eastern District of Texas. If they love patent trolls so much, then let them buy their tech gadgets from the patent trolls. Oh wait, the patent trolls don't actually make and sell anything. So the people from the Eastern District of Texas really don't deserve tech products.
Wow, I have visited the Frisco store plenty of times and it always packed. So much that people can't even hang out inside. I guess the $$$ and risk wasn't worth it and they figure everyone will just drive 30 minutes to go 17 miles and hang out in an even more packed store.
Why are Federal Courts thinking about "revenue" ? If any institution ought to be free of commercial entanglements, this is it.
Because people like getting paid. Or at least, being able to provide for themselves and their families.
They aren't. Federal Court Judges are paid strict salaries that are set by law: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
But increased workloads likely can be used to increase the number of local employees of the courts, and thus indirectly affect one's power base. This is not just about the judges, but the entire mini-industry the East Texas district has set up for itself. I've heard of corporations that have gone in the opposite direction as Apple just did before the "no shopping" rule was in effect, making lucrative civic donations in an attempt to sweeten dispositions toward themselves among the local citizens. If that doesn't speak to a completely corrupt system, I'm not sure what does.
Irony: Agile development has too much intertia to be abandoned now.
Don't worry. Europe managed to survive the spectre of Communism, it will overcome the spectre of John Galt, too.
I can definitely see that districts juries filled with people engaging in some populist fantasy about sticking it to an East/West coast greedy corporation trying to steal ideas from the little man.
Empire building.
I'm sure with the specialist workload they get added budget dollars and probably added fees from cases filed in their district. I'm sure there are a lot of people living well because they are a paid consultant on something to this court.
I also don't doubt there is a lively social economy in orbit around the judges and influential staff people in this court and I'm sure if there was ever a strict audit, especially of spouses, children and extended family members there would be a lot of unusually large gifts and special favors. It's probably a hell of a place to own a Mercedes dealership.
There might have been another incentive: judges ruling over cases where their own sons represented patent trolls: https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
Laudele lor desigur m-ar mahni peste masura.