Chief Justice Backs Plan to Review Patent Trial Forum-Shopping
(Bloomberg) -- Chief Justice John Roberts backed calls for the federal courts’ policy making body to review rules that have led to a concentration of patent cases in a Texas court criticized by Silicon Valley heavyweights like Apple Inc. and Alphabet Inc.’s Google.
In his annual year-end report on the judiciary, Roberts said the Judicial Conference of the U.S. is going to review the issue of judicial assignment and venue for patent cases in federal trial courts. Roberts had asked the Director of the Administrative Office, who serves as the secretary of the Judicial Conference, to present the issue after members of Congress from both parties complained that a quarter of all patent cases in the nation are concentrated before a single judge in Waco, Texas.
Roberts said a study of the “arcane but important matter of judicial administration” is a “good example of a matter that self-governing bodies of judges from the front lines are in the best position to study and solve -- and to work in partnership with Congress in the event change in the law is necessary.”
That the patent forum issue was one of just three agenda items in Roberts’ annual report -- the other two were financial disclosures and workplace harassment -- illustrates the pressure the judicial branch has come under to address the issue.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/companies/chief-justice-backs-plan-to-review-patent-trial-forum-shopping/ar-AASl0ea
= new reply since forum marked as read
