West Texas and Delaware Topped the Venue Rankings in 2022 Despite Significant Upheavals

The Western District of Texas was the top district for overall litigation and NPE litigation in 2022, holding the number-three spot for operating company litigation. Meanwhile, Delaware was the second most popular venue for overall litigation, the number-three district for NPEs, and the top venue for operating companies. The Eastern District of Texas was in third place for overall litigation, though it held the number-two spot for NPEs. Additionally, the top-three rankings in each category were largely the same for litigation filed in Q4, except that the District of New Jersey took third place for operating company activity, with West Texas falling to fourth.

West Texas and Delaware retained their positions atop the venue charts despite notable upheavals. For the former district, then-Chief Judge Orlando L. Garcia imposed a new order last July that was apparently designed to reduce the concentration of litigation before District Judge Alan D. Albright, by spreading his division’s patent cases among a larger group of judges. However, that order has had less of an impact than expected: the district’s practice of assigning new cases with the same parties and patents as prior suits to the same judge has meant that Judge Albright is still receiving the lion’s share of litigation, due to filings in existing campaigns. The result is that West Texas remained the top overall venue and the most popular one for NPE plaintiffs for both 2022, as shown above, and the fourth quarter.

Meanwhile, new disclosure requirements in the courtroom of Delaware Chief Judge Colm F. Connolly have caused trouble for some familiar plaintiffs. Among them are a group of entities linked to patent monetization firm IP Edge LLC, which ceased filing in Delaware altogether in Q4 as a possible result of pressure from Judge Connolly. However, even though this caused a significant drop in the NPE numbers for Delaware in Q4, the district still held onto second place overall for both the fourth quarter and the year as a whole.

See RPX’s fourth-quarter review for a deeper dive on West Texas and Delaware, and for further analysis of other key trends that impacted patent litigation and the patent marketplace in Q4 and 2022.