It’s well known that the discovery rules Judge T. John Ward set up in the Eastern District of Texas’ Marshall Division after he took the bench in 1999 helped ensure the district became a hotbed for patent infringement litigation. But, what was the case that launched a thousand suits, so to speak?
For the answer, rewind to the early 1990s. That’s when Texas Instruments devised a money-making litigation strategy intended to ensure customers renewed their licensing agreements with the Dallas-based tech company or face a patent infringement suit. And where better to file those suits than the Eastern District, where cases went to trial in months instead of years, due to a small number of criminal cases on the district’s docket?
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