The U.S. District Court for the District of Delaware is in a bind. The four-judge court, currently home to the nation’s second-busiest patent docket, is already operating with two vacancies. Now, it faces the specter of an influx of patent infringement suits after the U.S. Supreme Court this month moved to limit where those cases can be brought.
In TC Heartland v. Kraft Foods Group, a unanimous court ruled that, under the patent venue statute, a company “resides” in the jurisdiction in which it is incorporated. That means that the shorthanded court in Delaware — corporate home to some of the country’s biggest tech firms and a majority of its publicly traded companies — could see hundreds, or even thousands, of new patent filings that before would have gone to more plaintiff-friendly jurisdictions, like the U.S. District Court of the Eastern District of Texas.
