"So Small a Town, So Many Patent Suits" - New York Times Feature

As I indicated Friday, today's New York Times ran a feature article by Julie Creswell on the Marshall patent docket, which can be found here at So Small A Town, So Many Patent Suits .  (Photo of Judge Ward by Mark Graham).  (The article contains one major, major error, by the way - I did not say that Judge Ward's neck gets red when he gets mad - I said that his ears get red.  The advice to duck under the table when he takes his glasses off remains accurate - I just finished a trial with Judge Ward Friday and the advice stays the same).
The interesting fact is that the statistics in the article - the usual LegalMetric stats that the district's win rate is substantially above the national average - given as 59% nationally and 78% in Marshall - are a little misleading, at least for this year, and the actual statistics - at least for the year thus far - and seem to refute the article's premise.  The win rate for plaintiffs in patent cases in Marshall this year is 60% - a whopping one percent over the national average.  The district win rate is 71% this year, and when you factor in grants of summary judgment on infringement and invalidity (at least the ones I know of), it is 62.5%.  The article also made it look like Marshall juries hand out "Texas sized verdicts" (reporters love to say that - I think it's in their code of conduct when writing stories involving Texas), citing the TiVo verdict.  The fact is that the TiVo verdict was the first five-figure verdict in a patent case in Marshall since 1999 and only the second ever (1999's Texas Instruments v. Hyundai was the first and as best I can recall the only other five figure verdict).  It is number three in patent verdicts even in the Eastern District, after the z4 Technologies and Finisar cases decided earlier this year.  I thought it was kind of humorous that the case that Julie came down to cover for a feature on the world's most plaintiff-friendly patent docket was the first double-loss for a plaintiff - they lost on infringement and got their patent invalidated to boot.  Just goes to show that - contrary to the popular misconception - what juries do actually has a lot to do with the facts of the cases and how they are presented.