Notable Q3 Verdicts in East Texas and Beyond
The Eastern District of Texas was the top patent district for overall litigation (i.e., with no filter for plaintiff type) and NPE litigation in Q3 2026, the venue also holding the number-three spot for operating company litigation. In second for overall litigation was the District of Delaware, which held second place for NPE litigation but was the most popular district for operating company litigation. Meanwhile, the Western District of Texas trailed behind Delaware for overall litigation and NPE litigation, taking third place for both; and failed to break the top five for operating company filings.
While East Texas accounted for the bulk of the top patent damage awards returned in Q2 2026, the rankings were more geographically diverse in the third quarter.
For instance, Q3’s largest infringement verdict by far came in the Southern District of California, not historically a patent hotspot: In that case, a jury returned a verdict for Taction Technology, Inc. in its case against Apple in late September. It awarded Taction just over $5.7B for the infringement of three claims from two patents generally related to “tactile transducers that produce bass frequency vibrations for perception by touch” via haptic features of the accused products, including certain iPhone models. The case—described long ago as “heavily litigated” but “run-of-the-mill”—made prior headlines over the plaintiff’s relationship with litigation funder Burford Capital.
Another large damage award in the third quarter came in the Western District of Texas: In mid-July, a jury there returned a verdict for Viasat, finding that Kioxia has infringed a single patent claim through the provision of certain accused controllers. The jury awarded just over $229M, characterized as a running royalty “meant only to compensate for Kioxia’s past infringement through March 30, 2026”. The verdict marked the final damage award issued in a trial before Western District of Texas Judge Alan D. Albright, who left the bench on August 31, 2026.
Yet another large Q3 verdict came in the Middle District of North Carolina, also not widely known as a patent litigation hotbed. There, a jury returned a verdict for Shoals in its district court case against Ningbo Voltage Smart Production (formed in China) and Voltage (formed in North Carolina). The jury awarded the plaintiff over $70M in lost profits and over $26M for price erosion after finding infringement of ten claims spread across two patents generally related to solar panel connectors. None of the claims were proven invalid, and the jury found willfulness here.
In August 2026, in litigation filed by medical diagnostics company Beckman Coulter against Cytek Biosciences, a jury found that Cytek had not infringed three tried claims and had shown them to be invalid, but that it had infringed a fourth claim through the provision of flow cytometers and cell sorters used to analyze single-cell blood and tissue samples. The jury awarded $20M in lost profit damages and a reasonable royalty of $36.11M.
Despite these verdicts elsewhere, East Texas did see its share of jury results. On September 17, 2026, a jury found six claims from four 3D printer patents infringed and not proven invalid and awarded plaintiff Stratasys $27.6M in damages from defendant Shenzhen Tuozhu Technology Co. Ltd. (Bambu Lab and other subsidiaries). A few days later, the PTAB entered final written decisions in which some but not all of the claims found infringed were canceled. This one-two adds to a growing list of seemingly inconsistent validity determinations between district court juries and PTAB panels, as covered here.
See RPX’s third-quarter review for more on this and other developments impacting patent risk in Q3.
