In Q3 2020, West Texas Remained the Top District Overall, While Design Patent Plaintiffs Flocked to Northern Illinois
October 21, 2020
RPX data show that in the third quarter of 2020, the Western District of Texas remains the most popular venue for overall patent litigation (i.e., with no filter for plaintiff type, and excluding campaigns asserting only design patents) and for litigation filed by NPEs, also rising to second place for operating company litigation. The District of Delaware, meanwhile, was the top operating company venue and the number-two district for both overall and NPE litigation. The Eastern District of Texas—the favored venue of NPEs prior to the Supreme Court’s decision in TC Heartland—took third place for overall and NPE litigation but was in fifth place for operating company litigation.
Furthermore, an analysis of litigation asserting purely design patents—which spiked to an unprecedented extent in Q3—reveals that nearly all of that litigation (94%) has been filed in the Northern District of Illinois. All other districts saw very few defendants added to pure design patent cases, with the Southern District of New York holding a distant second place with just 32 defendants added.
See RPX’s third-quarter review for more on this and other trends.
