Posts Tagged: "Judge Rodney Gilstrap"

In the book / movie “The Shining”, the Overlook hotel is haunted by ghosts involved in past wrongs committed on the property, presumably to make the current inhabitants atone for such sins. Notwithstanding this transcendental precedent, Judge Rodney Gilstrap recently declined to extend such a notion to patents subject to Fair, Reasonable and Non-Discriminatory (FRAND) licensing related obligations.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (CAFC) in a precedential order yesterday granted a petition for writ of mandamus vacating Judge Rodney Gilstrap’s transfer of two cases out of the Eastern District of Texas to California. The petition was brought by Stingray IP Solutions, LLP and was opposed by TP-Link Technologies, a Chinese company, which Stingray accused of patent infringement. Stingray first filed the patent infringement suits in the Eastern District of Texas and TP-Link moved to dismiss for lack of personal jurisdiction or to transfer the cases to the Central District of California pursuant to 28 U.S.C. § 1406. After the Texas court granted transfer under Section 1406, Stingray petitioned the Federal Circuit for mandamus “solely on the issue of whether TP-Link’s unilateral, post-suit consent to personal jurisdiction in another state (California) defeated application of Rule 4(k)(2).”

Over the last several days, the Wall Street Journal has reported on numerous federal district court judges that it says have violated the Code of Judicial Conduct by not recusing themselves in cases where they, or their spouse, held a pecuniary interest. The Journal reporting finds that, in most cases, the judges seem to have mistakenly believed that if they or their spouses owned stock in a company and their portfolio was blindly or privately managed by a money manager without input or knowledge, they did not need to recuse themselves. That, however, is not the standard according to the Office of Administrative Courts. The judge identified as the one who most frequently failed to recuse himself was Rodney Gilstrap, Chief Judge of the United States Federal District Court for the Eastern District of Texas. Judge Gilstrap is well known throughout the country as the jurist with who, over the last decade, has had the largest docket of patent infringement cases, including virtually every patent case filed in the Eastern District of Texas.

In a previous article, we considered the difference between a reasonable royalty for infringement of a U.S. patent and a fair, reasonable and non-discriminatory (FRAND) rate for licensing standards essential patents (SEPs). Among other points, the article discussed the then ongoing case between Optis Wireless Technology, LLC et al. v. Apple Inc., Civil Action No. 2:19-cv-00066-JRG (E.D. Texas, September 10, 2020). Most recently, Judge Rodney Gilstrap issued an Opinion and Order as to Bench Trial Together with Supporting Findings of Fact and Conclusions of Law (“Opinion and Order”) and ordered Final Judgment be entered. This Opinion and Order sheds a little more light on the issue of damages for SEPs, including the role of exemplary damages for willful infringement, but also leaves some key questions unanswered.

On September 12, a jury verdict form  entered in an Eastern District of Texas patent infringement case found in favor of defendant Jack Henry & Associates on its defenses of noninfringement and invalidity regarding patent claims asserted by plaintiff PPS Data. According to information provided to IPWatchdog, the verdict marks the first time that a jury has invalidated a patent under Section 101 since the February 2018 decision of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit in Berkheimer v. HP Inc., where the appellate court held that factual questions underlie the Section 101 inquiry.