Context: After Judge Alan D. Albright of the Waco division of the United States District Court for the Western District of Texas became the most popular patent judge in the U.S., with approximately a quarter of all new cases filed in Waco, frequent defendants lobbied for new rules. In July 2022, then-Chief Judge Orlando Garcia entered an order according to which any new patent cases would be assigned randomly (PDF). Other venues have (re)gained some popularity as new filings are now much more likely to be assigned to other judges, but Judge Albright is still presiding over a substantial patent docket. Part of the reason is that he keeps getting related cases where one or more of the same patents as in previous cases are asserted against new defendants.
What’s new: On Thursday (May 30, 2024), Chief Judge Alia Moses amended (PDF) her predecessor’s assignment order with a special section on related cases: “Parties seeking to consolidate patent cases contending all cases are related shall file a motion with sufficient legal and factual justification in the court and with the judge presiding over the case sought to be removed.” But sometimes it still works differently in practice. Yesterday (June 4, 2024), Proxense v. LG Electronics, a patent case that is related to previously filed lawsuits against Samsung (settled), Google, Microsoft, Apple (March 23, 2024 ip fray article) and Intel, was assigned to Judge Albright with a view to judicial economy.
Direct impact: To the extent that patents overlap, claim construction will presumably be consistent with prior Proxense cases. That increases the likelihood of pretrial settlements.
Wider ramifications: A court’s leadership may favor random assignments, but judicial economy is an important factor that the Federal Circuit also stressed when throwing out Google’s venue transfer appeal against Proxense in April. Judge Albright subsequently denied a venue transfer motion by Microsoft, in no small part also on the basis of judicial economy (April 27, 2024 ip fray article).
The Proxense v. LG Electronics complaint was filed on May 31, the very first day after the revised assignment order for patent cases in the Western District. That same day, it was randomly assigned to Judge Kathleen Cardone (judge’s page on court website). On Monday (June 3, 2024), the summons issued to the two LG defendants. And the very next day, Tuesday, Judge Cardone entered the following order that was also signed by Judge Albright and assigned the case to the latter:
Based on the May 30, 2024 assignment order, Proxense could have “file[d] a motion [to relate cases] with sufficient legal and factual justification in the court.” Presumably that would have happened pretty soon. But the docket reflects no such motion. Instead, Judge Cardone apparently took a sua sponte initiative. She asked Judge Albright whether he’d accept the case, which he gladly did.
The judicial-economy argument was particularly strong here. The first Proxense case in that district, against Samsung, settled on the eve of trial. Not only claim construction but various other pretrial matters had been resolved by Judge Albright. And since then, there have been several related filings. And a couple of venue transfer motions have been decided, one of them even by the Federal Circuit.
There will be other cases in which things won’t go this smoothly. Some other judges in the district will not pass a case on like Judge Cardone did. Then the plaintiffs will have to bring motions to relate cases, and those motions will be adjudicated by the judges to whom those cases were randomly assigned.
As ip fray has repeatedly noted (such as on LinkedIn less than a week ago), Judge Albright is balanced. Defendants have a fair chance in his court, and his appellate track record shows that the Federal Circuit is sometimes patentee-friendlier than he is. But he’s a very knowledgeable patent judge, he’s committted to the swift adjudication of the cases before him (which is, by the way, also a key characteristic of the Unified Patent Court), and doesn’t just stay every case where someone files a PTAB IPR petition.