Last month, one of the nation's patent filing hot spots, the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Texas, put in place new court procedures that should send a large number of newly filed patent cases to new homes. For the last several years, Judge Alan Albright, a former patent litigator, seated in Waco, Texas, made it his mission to bring patent cases to a speedy trial and to have those cases administered efficiently. As a result, and because cases filed before him stayed before him, he received an ever-escalating number patent infringement filings. Indeed, last year, according to Lex Machina data, Albright received a total of 932 filings, almost 25% of all patent cases filed in the United States. Until last month, he was on a pace close to that for 2022. That's a lot of filings. A month into this new set of procedures, Lex Machina confirms that Western District of Texas patent filings are indeed down substantially. That said, there were 45 patent suit filings in the Western District over the last month, and reports are that many of those did make their way to Albright. Many of those cases likely were related to cases already pending before Judge Albright. How things may play out in the long run remains up for debate, but it is hard not to see substantial numbers of filings moving elsewhere.