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Although it is a federal district, the Eastern District of Texas does not have an FBI office or a U.S. Attorney's office, which lightens its criminal caseload from drug offense cases that inundate other federal courthouses. The Eastern District of Texas began to rise in prominence due to the patent monetization strategy that Texas Instruments used in the 1980s to save itself from bankruptcy. By the 1990s, Texas Instruments was earning more money from patent litigation than it was earning from operations. To maintain its profits, Texas Instruments had to continue using the court to extract royalties from those using their patents without permission. However, high volumes of criminal cases had begun impeding speedy trials in Dallas, where Texas Instruments is based, so the company looked toward Marshall, where criminal cases made up only 10 percent of the docket. Although it is a federal district, the Eastern District of Texas does not have an FBI office or a U.S. Attorney's office, which lightens its criminal caseload from the drug offense cases that usually inundate other federal courthouses.
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Some claim that the concentration of patent litigation cases filed in the Eastern District of Texas acts as proof that patent reform is necessary. Supposedly, patent trolls fill the courts of the Eastern District of Texas with litigation because the judges are pro-patent troll and provide incentives for patent trolls to file in their district. However, history and statistics tell a different story.
Judge T. John Ward began hearing patent cases after he was sworn in on the East Texas federal bench in 1999 and developed a set of rules for the court that counteracted the traditionally slow pace of patent cases. These changes, including page limits on document and strictly timed opening and closing documents, earned Marshall the reputation of being a "rocket docket." Consequently, the Eastern District of Texas was soon inundated with patent suits filed by companies who wanted to resolve their conflicts quickly.
