Northern District of Illinois is a Top Patent District Any Way You Slice It

Posted on April 19, 2010 by R. David Donoghue

LegalMetric Research has been running an interesting series of reports on nationwide patent litigation statistics by district. And in each case, the Northern District remains among the top patent district courts. 2009 was the rare year that the Northern District slipped out of the top five districts in terms of filings, but it only fell to sixth. And the combination of the new Local Patent Rules and the false marking cases will change that significantly for 2010 (more on both of those issues in the next few weeks). Here are the top ten districts by the number of patent suits filed in 2009:

1. C.D. California

 

2. E.D. Texas

 

3. D. Delaware

 

4. N.D. California

 

5. D. New Jersey

 

6. N.D. Illinois

 

7. S.D. New York

 

8. S.D. California

 

9. D. Massachusetts

 

10. E.D. Virginia

 

The Northern District is also one of six districts that produce half of all claim construction decisions. Not surprisingly, the Eastern District of Texas, the Northern District of California and the District of Delaware produce the most, with the Northern District of Illinois, the Southern District of New York and the Central District of California filling out the six. And these six districts also issue 43% of all reexam stays.

 

Finally, Judge Pallmeyer is the lone Northern District of Illinois on the list of top 30 patent judges by the number of 2009 patent cases assigned to them. Pallmeyer came in at number 23. The top five spots were held by Eastern District of Texas and District of Delaware. It is not surprising to see only a single Northern District judge on this list because the bench is relatively large, in particular compared to some of the other top patent districts like the Eastern District of Texas and the District of Delaware. But more Northern District judges will likely be in the top 30 next year because of increased filings through the first quarter, as well as the fifty or so false patent marking suits filed in the Northern District beyond the usual patent cases.

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Pre-KSR Validity Verdict Upheld Under KSR Standard

Posted on July 5, 2007 by R. David Donoghue

Lexion Medical, LLC v. Northgate Techs., Inc., No. 04 C 5705, Slip Op. (N.D. Ill. Jun. 8, 2007).*

Judge Rosenbaum (a visiting judge, who is the Chief Judge for the District of Minnesota) denied defendants’ Fed. R. Civ. P. 60(b) for relief from the Court’s judgment.  The Court held a trial in October 2006 resulting in a jury verdict that defendants’ insufflator (a device that blows a powder, gas or vapor into a body cavity) infringed plaintiff’s patent (you can read more about the case in the Blog’s archives). In their motion, defendants argued that the Supreme Court’s April 2007 obviousness decision, KSR Int’l Co. v. Teleflex Inc., __ U.S. __, 127 S.Ct. 1727 (2007), dramatically changed obviousness law and conflicted with the jury instructions which “nullif[ied] the jury verdict.” Defendants moved the Court to invalidate two claims of the patent in suit or to order a new trial on obviousness. But the Court held that even under the KSR standard, the jury’s verdict was fully supported by evidence at trial. Because a corrected instruction would not have changed the result, the erroneous instruction was harmless.

*You can read the opinion here.

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