WACO – The emergence of a new rocket docket for patent litigation in the state of Texas has at least two U.S. senators worried.
Judge Alan Albright, a former patent attorney who took the bench in 2018, is the only district judge in the Waco Division of the Western District of Texas. And in the three years he's been on the bench, his docket has grown to the point where he is presiding over roughly 25 percent of all infringement suits filed in the nation.
On Nov. 2, Sen. Thom Tillis, a Republican, and Sen. Patrick Leahy, wrote to Chief Justice John Roberts, expressing their “concern” over the patent litigation forum shopping taking place in the Western District’s Waco Division.
“The concentration of patent litigation is no accident,” the letter states. “We understand that a single judge in this district has openly solicited cases at lawyers’ meetings and other venues and urged patent plaintiffs to file their infringement actions in his court.
“The extreme concentration of patent litigation in one district and the unseemly and inappropriate conduct that has accompanied this phenomenon are, in our view, the result of an absence of adequate rules regulating judicial assignment and venue for patent cases within a district.”
The city of Austin, which is located in the Western District, is ripe with innovators – lucrative targets for patent trolls, a name given to companies that buy up patents for the purpose of filing lawsuits.
Long before Albright began hearing a quarter of all patent infringement cases filed in the nation, the Eastern District of Texas, rather than the Western District, was the preferred home for patent trolls.
Bombarded with thousands of patent suits every year, the Eastern District, dubbed the “rocket docket” in some circles, became a venue where juries routinely doled out monstrous verdicts against tech companies.
In early 2019, Apple announced it was closing up shop, literally, in the Eastern District in hopes of escaping patent trolls.
Now some groups fear a similar pattern is already emerging in the Western District.
Earlier this year, a jury delivered a record-breaking $2.18 billion verdict against Intel in Albright’s court.
Albright’s growing patent docket even prompted the Computer and Communications Industry Association to create a website, Expose Patent Trolls – a site dedicated to informing Texans that patent trolls have “found a welcoming court in Waco.”
Tillis and Leahy are asking Roberts to direct the Judicial Conference to conduct a study of actual and potential abuses “that the present situation has enabled.”
“Additionally, we ask that such a study consider and implement appropriate reforms that you can take to address this issue,” the letter states. “Finally, we ask that such a report provide legislative recommendations to ensure this problem does not arise in the future.”
CCIA members employ almost one million workers and generate more than $540 billion in annual revenue. The Association’s members include computer and communications companies, equipment manufacturers, software developers, service providers, re-sellers, integrators and financial service companies.