Judges Gilstrap and Albright provide guidance on trial procedures and remote hearings.  And a strong warning against Rule 33(d) games.

SPEAKERS

Wayne Stacy, Michael Smith

 

Wayne Stacy  00:00

Welcome, everyone to the Berkeley Center for Law and Technology's last week in Texas podcast. This is Wayne Stacy from BCLT. And once again, we're here with Michael Smith, as you know if it happened, he's the one to tell you about it.

 

Michael Smith  00:15

So certainly try.

 

Wayne Stacy  00:18

Well, except if it's worth knowing you're gonna, you're gonna know about it, Michael. So let's just kick this off and tell us what happened in Texas last week?

 

Michael Smith  00:28

Well, the the thing I wanted to start with is, we had some analysis out last week on filing trends in 2021. Scott Graham with ALM was analyzing United patents recent report of patent filings and gave us some numbers to kind of see what's happening numerically with the with the cases, we know that that patent infringement filings were essentially flat last year, at around not quite 3800 cases, the Western District of Texas had 25% of those cases, and Judge Albright had 23%. The other 2% were split between the other judges in the district. For those of y'all that want to know where he was last year, last year, he was at 20%. So clearly, that's leveling off. But Scott, notice something that wasn't in the report, but that if you look at the data throughout the year, you can tell by the end of the year, the filings and judge Allbright's court, were trending down a little bit. And the people he talked to it united said they think that's due to recent Federal Circuit venue opinions. And I think that's probably correct. Delaware came in second with 22%. And the Eastern District of Texas was third with 11%. Another trend towards the end of the year is that Judge Gilstrap share in Marshall in the western in the Eastern District was picking up a little bit, he was up to about 8% of all cases, nationally, the Delaware judges have all got four to 5%. So it looks like we'll know better. In another quarter or two, it looks like some patent plaintiffs are coming back to the Eastern District. Or that might simply be I saw a trend right the the on New Year's Eve, a plaintiff filed about a dozen cases in Marshall, and then kept filing the beginning of the year. So it may just be one filer. But anyway, that's what's happening with filing trends in the state so far.

 

Wayne Stacy  02:20

Well, it'll be interesting to see what happens long term, but notably, the Northern District of Texas is becoming almost irrelevant. Is that fair?

 

Michael Smith  02:33

Well, they have the problem that without the patent pilot district, you don't know which judge you're going to get. And for the last 10 years, the same three judges have handled all the patent cases. So you knew you were going to get judges