The United States has 94 federal judicial districts, but in 2015, almost half of all new patent cases were filed in just one—the Eastern District of Texas. More than 670 district court judges preside over the nation’s courts, but nearly one-third of all patent cases filed in 2015 were assigned to a single judge – the Honorable Rodney Gilstrap, in, yes, the Eastern District of Texas.
“There has never been a time when there was such a concentration of cases in one federal court,” said John Sganga, a partner at Knobbe, Martens, Olson & Bear who has handled many cases in that district. “No other area of federal law has seen one district become such a magnet nationwide.”
