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Comment by BuyMyBitcoins | Hacker News Reader

I know that most patent lawsuits end up being filed in some East Texas District Court. Is this ruling going to change this convention, or invalidate those rulings?

Edit: More detail about the East Texas thing. Apple decided to close its retail stores in that region so they can hopefully avoid patent troll suits there. https://www.macrumors.com/2019/02/22/apple-closing-stores-in...

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Generally speaking, this decision should not alter decisions in the district courts. Today's decision concerns filings in a specific agency court (the Patent Trial and Appeal Board, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patent_Trial_and_Appeal_Board) created in 2012 as part of the American Invents Act.

Also, the Western District of Texas and Delaware have more filings these days than the Eastern District of Texas. The case-filing numbers for 2020/2021 collectively are WDTX (~30%), DDE (~26%), and EDTX (~14%). There are a few things behind that change, but the biggest is probably a Supreme Court decision in 2017 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TC_Heartland_LLC_v._Kraft_Food...).

Probably unrelated, but the ruling in TC Heartland LLC v. Kraft Foods Group Brands LLC made it somewhat harder to sue in EDTX.

Only somewhat. Any company that has locations there or a tech company that has its services available and used there can still be sued in the eastern district. See the recent VLSI Technology v Intel ruling.

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