While the Lone Star State’s IP Bar frets over the possibility of losing the Eastern District of Texas as the nation’s most favored patent infringement jurisdiction because of a pending U.S. Supreme Court decision, they’ll get no sympathy from Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton.
The case in question, TC Heartland v. Kraft Foods, was accepted for review by the high court in December and could change liberal patent filing rules that have turned the Eastern District into the nation’s most popular venue for patent litigation. Nearly one-third of all patent cases filed in 2015 were assigned to Eastern District’s Marshall Division and many of the cases heard in East Texas are filed by nonpracticing entities pejoratively referred to as “patent trolls.”
