"Patent lawsuits skyrocket in Texas" - Dallas Morning News

The Dallas Morning News is re-running an article from Mark Curriden's Texas Lawbook today on the spike in patent filings in Texas since the AIA.  The article notes that "the number of patent infringement lawsuits filed in Texas federal courts nearly doubled in 2012, and that "federal courts in the Eastern District of Texas, which includes Marshall, Texarkana and Tyler, saw the number of patent lawsuits jump from 607 in 2011 to 1,263 last year, an increase of 108 percent."  

All that is true, but what statistics like that miss is that a substantial part of those numbers is not in fact "patent infringement lawsuits filed" in 2012, but rather cases filed before the AIA which were severed into separate cases last year as a result of the Federal Circuit's decision in In re EMC (the first one) last spring.  Because on severance, the severed cases are docketed as new cases, they count as "filings" in 2012, but I think it's misleading to consider them as actual 2012 filings, which connotes a voluntary decision by a plaintiff to file a suit.  I don't have statistics on how many of the 2012 filings were in severed pre-2011, pre-AIA cases, but I am guessing at least a couple hundred and maybe more.  Maybe many more.

The general story is accurate - the AIA joinder provision has dramatically increased the number of patent infringement cases filed since its passage - but the metrics are somewhat off in by that we intend to look at how many new cases are being filed. 

I did get a kick out of the evergreen reference to "plaintiff-friendly juries".  Didn't look so friendly to me Monday afternoon in Tyler when they held eleven claims not infringed and invalid.  But that's just me.