Federal Judiciary

Transfer, then Stay - The New Texas Two-Step?

By Michael C. Smith

Scott McKeown has an interesting post "The New Texas Two-Step" on the Patents Post-Grant weblog about the statistical prevalence of motions to transfer in the Eastern District to seek California as a destination (close to 50%) - and makes the observation that the second step in a defendant's strategy might be a stay pending reexam due to California federal courts' perceived willingness to stay cases pending reexamination, when compared to the Eastern District of Texas.  

I read a very nice article draft last week (which I look forward to posting on when the law student writing it has it finalized) that spotted the same thing - that right at half the motions to transfer filed in the Eastern District seek California as a destination.  Neither has any statistical information about the relative likelihood of the two districts to stay cases, or any identification of cases that determined that the relative "reexamination friendliness" of a district is or is not relevant to a motion to transfer but it is an interesting observation.  I appreciate Scott's pointing it out (and I really like the cool pie chart).

Full post as published by Eastern District of Texas Federal Court Practice on May 03, 2010 (boomark / email).