Summary: Eastern Texas is being 'evacuated' in the wake of TC Heartland, which continues to be brought up by legal defense teams

THE decision known as TC Heartland has been great. This year-old, Earth-shattering SCOTUS decision helped discourage litigation which relied on Texas. It helped guard the innocent, i.e. those falsely accused of infringement, typically using dubious patents; they try to dodge the trolls-friendly courts, which blindly accept almost anything granted by the USPTO (usually in jury trials, where the jury is nontechnical).

"It's no exaggeration to say the in East Texas the courts openly signaled that they would be plaintiffs- and trolls-friendly. They made no secret of the fact."Baker Donelson (W Edward Ramage), in another paid placement at IAM, very belatedly caught up with In re Bigcommerce -- a case about dodging to courts that do their job instead of trying to appeal to patent trolls. It's no exaggeration to say the in East Texas the courts openly signaled that they would be plaintiffs- and trolls-friendly. They made no secret of the fact.

Over at Docket Navigator, a site which tracks cases of interest/importance, quite a few TC Heartland-related cases have been brought up over the past week. Consider Blue Rhino Global Sourcing, Inc. v Sky Billiards, Inc. d/b/a Best Choice Products and Adrian Rivera v Remington Designs, LLC d/b/a iCoffee, both of which are citing TC Heartland.

"Over at Docket Navigator, a site which tracks cases of interest/importance, quite a few TC Heartland-related cases have been brought up over the past week.""The court granted defendant's motion to transfer for improper venue and rejected plaintiff's argument that defendant waived its venue challenge," said one Docket Report and another new TC Heartland case had the opposite outcome: "The court denied defendants' motion to dismiss or transfer for improper venue because defendants waived their venue challenge through their litigation conduct."

With numbers (latest figures) suggesting that the District of Delaware becomes venue of choice for many [1, 2] we're somewhat relieved to leave the era of Eastern Texas behind. No doubt the economy there will suffer (businesses would be wise not to operate there after TC Heartland), but one might call that karma for bad faith and overzealously litigious spirit. ⬆