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However, this "rocket docket" claim is no longer true, as it now takes two to three years on average for a patent suit to reach trial in the Eastern District of Texas, compared to around a year in Eastern Virginia, which receives far fewer patent litigation cases. In 2002, 32 patent lawsuits were filed in the Eastern District of Texas. In 2015, the district received 2,540 patent litigation cases. This constituted 43.6% of all patent litigation cases filed in the United States in 2015. According to PricewaterhouseCoopers, the percentage of patent litigation cases in the most active districts continues to increase, leading to increased concentrations of patent litigation in certain districts of the United States. From 2012 to 2015, 4,350 patent lawsuits were filed with Judge Rodney Gilstrap of the Eastern District of Texas, which was 3,000 more cases than were filed with the next highest judge.
However, this rise in the number of patent lawsuits matches the increase in numbers of patents granted by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. From 2009 to 2015, the number of patents applications filed increased from 460,924 to 580,327. 189,120 patents were granted in 2009, while 325,037 patents were granted in 2015. The number of patent lawsuits increased from 2,560 in 2009 to 5,378 in 2015. The patent litigation rate has remained relatively steady, with rates of 1.4 percent in 2009 and 1.7 percent in 2015. This time period saw a low of 1.1 percent in 2010 and a high of 2.0 percent in 2013.
PricewaterhouseCoopers statistics show that the Eastern District of Texas had 55 decisions from 1995 to 2014 involving [[Non-Practicing Entities|non-practicing entities]] (NPEs) as patent holders, and 49 percent of these NPEs were successful in their patent litigation cases. The Eastern District of Texas decided a total of 148 patent litigation cases from 1995 to 2014, which means that decisions involving NPEs made up 37% of the total decisions in the Eastern District of Texas during this time period.
