Texas Patent Pendulum Swings Back From West to Eastern District

Two years after a July 2022 order forced patent case assignments to broaden beyond a single West Texas judge to a team of a dozen in the district, patent attorneys are once again flocking to a courtroom in the Lone Star State’s eastern region where a mountain of cases stand before another solitary judge.

Almost every case a plaintiff filed against Ricardo Bonilla’s clients in 2022 was in the US District Court for the Western District of Texas, said the principal at Fish & Richardson PC. Few of his clients—spanning telecommunications, software, and standard essential patents— were sued in the ...