Patent litigator James Pistorino has emerged from the collapse of Howry as a partner at Perkins Coie. In a recent BNA article, Pistorino provided a brief analysis of patent complaints filed in 2010 with a focus on the Eastern District of Texas. In 2010, E.D. Texas held a slight lead in the absolute number of patent cases filed. Excluding false marking cases, 299 cases were filed in E.D. Texas compared with 255 in Delaware, 225 in the Central District of California, 180 in the Northern District of California, and 179 in the Northern District of Illinois. Pistorino argues that E.D. Texas’s slight lead in the number of cases filed masks the jurisdiction’s continued overwhelming popularity. In particular, he considered the number of defendants sued for infringement and found that in 2010 more defendants were sued in E.D. Texas than in Delaware, California, New Jersey, and Illinois combined. Figure 2 from the article highlights this conclusion. Based upon the data reported, Pistorino goes on to question “whether the forum shopping issue in patent cases (particularly in the Eastern District of Texas) has been solved and whether increased scrutiny of improper joinder of defendants is warranted.”
See James Pistorino, Concentration of Patent Cases in Eastern District of Texas Increases in 2010, 81 BNA Patent, Copyright & Trademark Journal 803 (2011) (Subscriber access only).