The Best Little Courthouse In Texas
September 25th, 2006 Davis
Over the last year, Marshall Texas has received a lot of publicity over their connection to a number of high profile patent cases. Whether it was TiVo’s dispute with Echostar or Microsoft’s patent loss to Autodesk, this small little town has found themselves at the center of the exploding patent industry in the US.
While the Marshall Courthouse has been accused of catering to patent trolls and of having jurors that tend to be overly symphathetic to plantiffs, the real driving force behind the patent lawsuits being filed in Marshall started when Judge John Ward got fed up with the long delays and problems with patent cases and set up what he refers to as “the rules.” The rules are a set of guidelines that Judge Ward uses to ensure that patent cases move quickly through the Marshall court system. They include strict time tables that attorneys must adhere too, as well as page limits on arguments being made to the court.
While these limitations were designed to help reduce the number of patent cases on the docket in Marshall, it actually ended up having the opposite effect by creating a very attractive district for plaintiffs to file for relief against patent infringers. Already patent cases can take years to make it through the court systems, but by offering a more streamline approach to patent litigation, Judge Ward went from speeding up his docket to making Marshall a patent hub in the US court system.
This weekend the NYTimes wrote a great background piece on Marshall Texas (BugMeNot) and discussed the impact that the patent gold rush is having on the local economy there. In a city where the local attorneys generally know the jurors on a first name basis, the flood of outsiders has been seen both positively and negatively. On one hand high priced out of town patent attorneys help to bring local commerce to the city and has been a boom to the local office rents and the hotel industry, but on the other hand, for a town where the biggest social event is their fire ant festival and the major news outlet is the Marshall News Messenger, the influx of outsiders is watched with a bit of distrust. Judge Ward often has to start out his patent proceedings by issuing what’s referred to as the “rattlesnake speech.” A stern warning to out of towners that they are beginning to get the judge rattled by their delays.
“Like a scene out of the comedy movie “My Cousin Vinny,” the speech starts with a polite invitation to approach the bench — and ends with a stern warning to pick up the pace or else. “He gives you a real talking to,” says Smith, a partner with the Roth Law Firm in Marshall and chairman of the Eastern District’s rule committee, a group of local attorneys that works with Judge Ward to set the guidelines for basic pre-trial and trial procedure. “He won’t bite you that first time, but if you don’t get the message, you’ll wish you did.”
With the growing importance of Marshall as a patent hub, many attorneys have tried to do their best to adjust to the small town life, including picking up a Texas drawl and attending local events, but in a town with less then 25,000 residents blending in can be pretty difficult for outside attorneys. Instead many firms have turned to local attorneys to help them navigate juror selections and the nuances of small town life.
While Marshall has taken their share of critcism for contributing the the deluge of patent lawsuits, I believe that much of this criticism is unfounded. Many of these cases would have been filed one way or another and if other court systems would adopt similar rules to help resolve these sorts of disputes quicker, we would we see patent attorneys start filing lawsuits in other areas. While many patent defendents may fear the district, if other courts were more efficient about processing their own case loads, then Marshall wouldn’t be the one the pick up the slack.
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