
A Small Town Judge Who Sees a Quarter of the Nation’s Patent Cases - MichaelAO
http://motherboard.vice.com/read/the-small-town-judge-who-sees-a-quarter-of-the-nations-patent-cases
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nibs
Wow. I never knew this is how patent law worked. It seems like this might be a
big 'patent integrity' bottleneck. Not that the Judge is not objective (I have
no way of knowing), it just seems like there is too much room for opinion and
influence to seep in when it is so centralized.

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dctoedt
As the article points out, ths centralization is a byproduct of Judge Ward,
_of necessity_ , having "built a better mousetrap" in terms of court rules for
processing cases. As is customary in federal courts, when Judge Ward first
became a judge, his initial case load was built by the court's other judges
transferring the cases they didn't especially want to deal with; this included
most of their patent cases. So Judge Ward found himself inundated with patent
cases, and needed to figure out a way to keep up. Looking around for ideas, he
adapted court rules that had been developed in the Northern District of
California, which encompasses San Francisco and Silicon Valley. Those court
rules, plus the low numbers of federal-crime cases in that rural division (by
law, criminal cases get priority), meant that Judge Ward got his patent cases
to trial quickly. This attracted plaintiffs wanting just such speedy
"service."

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jessaustin
This seems similar to the "traffic jams on new roads" phenomenon, by which
adding more lanes or roads in an urban area actually _increases_ traffic
rather than alleviating it as highway-construction fans always expect.
Providing public resources like courts or roads is never a neutral action, so
political corruption is always a possibility.

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raould42
From what I have seen in life, of how everybody including myself behaves, and
how I think/feel, it is not just a possibility. The question is not is there
any political corruption at all, the question is how much more than zero is
it? When we fail to have checks and balances at all, or that actually try to
work, then we're kinda doomed.

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dredmorbius
Can we do something about the clickbait title? This is Judge Rodney Gilstrap,
of the East Texast Federal District Court, in Marshall, TX.

The story _is_ good. In particular, it highlights how a small cascade of
incentives can lead to a grossly perverted and corrupt result, from the
USPTO's issueing of crap patents (with full impunity), the Eastern District's
procedures, Rodney's actions, and a home-grown trolling industry.

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chris_wot
There must be a way of doing a statistical analysis of the court's judgements
to determine how fair they are. Anyone have any ideas how this could be done?

Incidentally, anyone who provides an answer that is patented will
automatically get an upvote from me :-)

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WildUtah
It's not a matter of win and loss rates. The vast majority of patent cases are
settled without trial. Especially in EDTX, patent defendants know they cannot
get a fair trial and settle to avoid the outrageous verdicts that come out of
Gilstrap's courtroom.

And it costs millions to even go to court in EDTX because of the extra special
discovery and expert costs and timing restraints Gilstrap imposes on
defendants.

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chris_wot
Which would tend to indicate that the defendants believe that they will lose
badly, no?

Thus the win and loss rates become interesting, because then it can be seen if
the number of judgements against the defendants deviate significantly from the
national mean.

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WildUtah
Actually the multi-million dollar cost of litigating in EDTX for defendants
(it's cheap for plaintiffs) is usually more than the plaintiffs are asking for
to settle. So defendants that expect to win big still have to settle and pay
or they'll ruin their business.

Most EDTX patent defendants have under $10MM in revenue. Trolls target small
companies in these suits more often than large ones.

