No Texas district is even in the top 5 for win rates for patent plaintiffs. You'd think if they were "in the pockets" of patent trolls, the trolls would achieve better outcomes there.
The actual reasons filing patent cases in EDTX is popular are:
• EDTX does not have a busy Federal criminal case load. Criminal cases have higher priority than civil cases. If you try to litigate a complex civil case in a district that has a heavy criminal load (e.g., anywhere that has a lot of drug trafficking), it can be nearly impossible to get any court time.
• Patent cases are complex. If you have a judge with little experience with patent cases, things will go slow. So, people like to file in districts that have a few judges with patent case experience.
Damned near all patent troll are based in hickville towns. It is not coincidence and it is not because the judges are "experienced" with patent cases. It is because those judges side with the plaintiffs.
"No Texas district is even in the top 5 for win rates for patent plaintiffs. You'd think if they were "in the pockets" of patent trolls, the trolls would achieve better outcomes there."
Because they shouldn't win any of these software patent cases. We're talking about trolls...businesses whose only purpose is to shake down people who build real products for real people. Every damned one of these cases should be laughed out of court. They go to Marshall because they won't get laughed out of court.
> No Texas district is even in the top 5 for win rates for patent plaintiffs. You'd think if they were "in the pockets" of patent trolls, the trolls would achieve better outcomes there.
Not necessarily. If all the plaintiffs with poor-quality patents sue in that district (and they mostly do), those losing cases will pull down the patent plaintiff win rate for the district.
So it could still be the most patent-plaintiff-friendly district, even if the win rate is lower there.
A bad reputation among who? Maybe in your insular circle, but certainly not for the majority of middle-class Americans. It has the highest in migration rate for a reason.
Yeah, I live here (Austin; spent 10 years in Houston, too). I love Texas.
But, Texas does have a reputation for being backward, regressive, racist, and willfully ignorant. It was Texas State Board of Education that led to a decades-long battle over evolution. If that's not embarrassing, I don't know what is.
Texas also just passed a law that will shut down all but 4 (maybe 5) of the health clinics that offer abortion in the entire state. Those clinics are also where a lot of folks get birth control, STD testing, and often where poor women go for gynecological care.
Texans will spend 15% more on healthcare because of the stubbornness of our governor. Whether one agrees with Obamacare or not, it's pretty nasty to intentionally screw over poor people out of nothing more than spite.
Texas definitely has a bad reputation. And, it deserves that bad reputation.
As a native Texan (I've lived in the Houston area for about 26 years), I agree with most of what you say.
RE: the clinics, instead of closing, could those clinics continue to offer the other services and simply stop offering abortions? I feel like it's throwing the baby out with the bath water to just shut down altogether. Perhaps I am just misunderstanding the legislation, so please correct me if I'm wrong.
I do not belive all Texans (or even the most of them) are as bad as one might think, but the tiny bits of information we get about Texas paint an ugly picture.
We do not get Reports like "Things are going well in Austin!". In the internatiol news reports. We get reports like
"Stricter abortion laws, force clinics to shut down", "Armed Militia hunting illegal imgrants at the Border", "Patent troll wins in Texas", "...".
Texas is a great target for critics all over the world:
Texas is well known and is closly associated with Cowboys, strict laws, and the death sentence.
Liberals have someone, to bash and local conservativs are glad that critics get distracted by someone far far away.
So I´m sorry Texas reputation is bad, not only among IT folks, and not only in small hardcore leftist cells.
I do _NOT_ say that all this true.
Hell, I would be shocked if it really was!
No, and that's one of the problems with our patent system.
But, in this case, all they had to do was judge the difference between the inventor of public key encryption and a paid shill for patent trolls. The expert witness on the side of the troll is a guy who does this for a living; the expert witness on NewEgg's side was Whit Fucking Diffie. The "Diffie" in "Diffie-Hellman".
There's a reason patent trolls have all set up shop in this backward little Texas town. It's biggest industry is stifling innovation for the rest of the country.
The average American is going to find Whit Diffie to be an ass.
I mean no disrespect to the man. I hold him in high regard. But watch an interview with him and tell me that you think most people are going to find him to be a humble and appealing man.
This statement (thanks for providing a concise version of it) sums up the problem with the whole idea of a jury trial. It is completely irrelevant if someone thinks he is an ass. He is there to provide expert knowledge, nothing else.
"Lack of evidence? Who cares? He looks evil, must be a killer .."
No, that is not what they had to judge. I disagree with the outcome too, but the case was more complex than that. As far as I understand, part of the problem was whether or not this patent or RC4 had priority based on timing, which hinged on when RC4 and the method in the patent under litigation became known by enough people to be considered publicly known.
I wonder if that ever gets flagged in courts? You know, people who appear to be "professional expert witnesses", i.e. they make their living being an "expert witness" in court?
No, but I would expect jurors in a patent validity case to understand the concept of "prior art", which was demonstrated quite conclusively for this "invention".
This was my opinion too. I'm shocked that they didn't take it into consideration. Ironically the plaintiff tried to discredit Diffie by mentioning that the GCHQ "invented" the encryption even before Diffie did (this was mentioned in a previous Ars Technica article) which makes it prior art to the alleged patents too. A sad day :(
Therein lies one of the problems with software, patent law, and our judicial process: if the jury doesn't understand the underlying technologies, how can they possibly make an informed and responsible verdict?
I'd also be curious to see the results of an unbiased survey covering the public's awareness and understanding of patent trolls.
If only I could change careers and go into patent law... And help fight the good fight.
