Eastern District of Virginia -- A Top Venue for Patentee Plaintiffs (?)
As reported on Dennis Crouch’s Patently-O (link here), Professor Mark A. Lemley of Stanford Law School has released a draft of his study on patent forum shopping, “Where to File Your Patent Case” (found here). The U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia gets a fair amount of attention in Professor Lemley’s study. Some of the take-away points about the Eastern District of Virginia include:
- The Eastern District Virginia is the second “best aggregate district for plaintiffs,” after the Middle District of Florida, and ranks at the top of surveys based on outcome-oriented plaintiffs and plaintiffs’ interest in getting to trial.
- The Eastern District of Virginia has an patentee “win rate” is a relatively high 30.4% -- not far off of the Eastern District of Texas (at 40.3%) and above the traditionally plaintiff-friendly Western District of Wisconsin (at 24.0%);
- The Eastern District of Virginia has the fourth highest rate of patent cases going to trial (at 6.4%), just below the District of Delaware (11.8%), Eastern District of Texas (8.0%), and Western District of Wisconsin (7.4%);
- The Eastern District of Virginia has the second shortest time to resolution (0.64 years) and time to trial (0.96 years), just shy of the Western District of Wisconsin (0.56 and 0.67, respectively);
Thus, if statistics are any guide, the Eastern District of Virginia appears to be one of the best venues for patentee plaintiffs.
The results of Professor Lemley’s study are interesting. For example, he points out that the W.D. of Wisconsin, usually a top choice for plaintiffs, actually has among the lowest patentee win rates. Likewise, the Eastern District of Texas is not one of the five best districts for plaintiffs. While Professor Lemley includes a number of caveats and qualifications, his draft report (and Dennis Crouch’s summary thereof) are well worth a read.
