The spring of 2017 saw two significant developments in patent litigation. The first was the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in TC Heartland dramatically narrowing the scope of permissible venue in patent cases to require in most cases that a defendant have facilities in the forum. The other was the decision by Texas’ senators to nominate Austin lawyer Alan D Albright for a vacancy in the Waco Division of the Western District of Texas.

While TC Heartland acted to constrain patent filings in the Eastern District of Texas, this was not the case in the Western District of Texas because of the substantial operations by large tech defendants in the “Silicon Hills”. For example, Apple is constructing a massive $1 billion campus in Northwest Austin, Google is building a 35-story office tower in downtown Austin, and Facebook’s parent company, Meta, signed the largest ever lease in downtown Austin by reserving almost three dozen floors in a downtown office building. Accordingly, patent filings in the district began to rise, comprising approximately 25% of new patent case filings nationwide by the end of 2021.

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