Context: In June, German publicly-traded supercomputer firm ParTec AG sued Microsoft in the Eastern District of Texas, alleging the infringement of two of its patents by Microsoft’s cloud infrastructure, particularly with a view to Microsoft’s operation of AI systems (June 10, 2024 ip fray article). Last month, ParTec also sued chipmaker Nvidia in the Unified Patent Court (UPC) (October 28, 2024 ip fray article). Last week, the company answered some questions from the media and from analysts at a press conference (November 7, 2024 ip fray article).
What’s new: Surprisingly, Chief Judge Rodney Gilstrap of the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Texas yesterday recused himself from the Microsoft case. That one has since been reassigned to District Judge Robert W. Schroeder III.
Direct impact: At this stage, the reassignment is unlikely to cause delay.
Wider ramifications: It appears that many U.S. federal judges prefer to err on the side of caution when recusing themselves from cases.
The following screenshot from the electronic docket already reflects the reassignment:
Here’s the notice of recusal, which does not state any particular reason:
While there could be any number of reasons, the most common reason for such recusals from such cases is that a judge or their spouse hold shares in a publicly-traded company that is party to the case. Here, both parties are publicly-traded, but the likelihood of Judge Gilstrap or his spouse owning shares in ParTec is next to nil, while Microsoft is obviously part of the portfolios of many (especially U.S.) investors.
Also, at this stage Microsoft isn’t among the companies most frequently sued in that district (as opposed to, for instance, Samsung, which has an extremely strong presence there). Therefore, Judge Gilstrap and his spouse probably didn’t see a reason they couldn’t purchase shares in that company.
If patent cases in Marshall, Texas or Tyler, Texas are not handled by Judge Gilstrap, they typically go to Judge Schroeder, making the Obama appointee one of the most active and experienced patent judges in the United States.
Two weeks ago Microsoft filed its invalidity contentions. The content of that court filing is not known yet.