My numeracy is not the problem your literacy is, you don't know what hick means and you don't understand the significance of the suffix -ville either.dhouston wrote:In 2009 Texas (or Hicksville as you call it) had the 14th largest economy in the world. The UK was ranked 6th in 2010 but that was only 30% greater in GDP than Texas the previous year. Since 2009, Texas has continued to grow while the UK has stagnated. Hicksville, indeed.the.weavster wrote:I seem to remember you claiming Linux had been dealt a mortal blow by a patent court ruling against Google in Hicksville USA...
Is innumerancy a common problem amongst your countrymen or are you atypical in that regard?
Q: Why is the Eastern District of Texas the venue for so many patent cases?
A: There are many reasons for this, but the three most important in practice are:
Judge Ward and the other judges in the EDTX generally refuse to stay patent litigation pending reexamination of the patent by the USPTO. Other districts (as in the case I had in Chicago) will generally stay the litigation so as not to waste anyone's time or money. This matters because the plaintiff (troll) is paying its lawyers zero (assuming they took the case on contingency), whereas the defendant corporation is paying hundreds of thousands of dollars per year in legal fees for motion practice, discovery and claim construction. Even if it's a total crap, flimsy, worthless patent that's virtually certain to have most or all of its claims invalidated by the PTO upon reexam. This practice makes no sense at all. It wastes huge amounts of time and money litigating something that may well end up moot when the PTO invalidates the patent. But it gives plaintiffs massive leverage in terms of forcing a settlement -- and almost all cases settle.
The EDTX generally refuses to transfer cases to other venues. It jealously holds on to them, perhaps because they are a cash cow for the local economy and plaintiffs' bar. All the ambulance chasers that were put out of business by tort reform in Texas found another calling -- as they say, "from PI to IP."
For the few cases that do make it to trial, the jury pool in the EDTX is reportedly sympathetic to plaintiffs (particularly if the case involves, for example, an Asian consumer electronics or semiconductor company), leading to a high percentage of plaintiffs' verdicts and judgments for large dollar amounts. This has its own effect, making defendants more risk-averse and therefore more likely to settle in that district for higher amounts.
These factors combine to make the EDTX the shakedown capital of the patent litigation world. It's a nasty, pernicious racket.
- Antone Johnson
Founding Principal of Bottom Line Law Group in San Francisco and Los Angeles (Santa Monica), CA. Former VP and head of worldwide legal affairs at eHarmony; one of the original in-house lawyers at MySpace.
Source: http://www.quora.com/Patent-Litigation/ ... tent-cases
Their stuff, they are free to do with it as they want. 
