Kansas District Court

Court overview. The United States District Court for the District of Kansas sits in the Tenth Circuit, with divisions in Kansas City, Topeka, and Wichita. It is a small patent venue: Justia's historical docket index lists roughly 175 patent cases (Nature of Suit 830) in the district across decades, and the platform tracks only two patent matters here currently. It is not a volume patent court on the order of the Eastern or Western Districts of Texas, Delaware, or the Central District of California.

Patent docket reputation. There is no published Lex Machina, Unified Patents, or RPX analysis identifying the District of Kansas as a "rocket docket" or as a particularly plaintiff- or defendant-friendly patent venue; its profile is that of a generalist, low-volume district where most patent work is local commercial litigation (e.g., Garmin, agriculture and manufacturing defendants). The court has shown willingness to engage fully with patent-specific procedure — it adopted formal Patent Local Rules in 2017 — but its transfer and trial track record is not well documented in public analytics, so no reliable characterization is possible here.

Local rules and procedures. The District of Kansas has its own Patent Local Rules (D. Kan. Pat. R.), effective for cases filed on or after August 14, 2017, and modeled on other districts' rules after a local bench-bar study. They mandate early "Disclosure of Asserted Claims and Infringement Contentions" with accompanying document production (Rule 3.1–3.2), Invalidity Contentions due 70 days later (Rule 3.3), limits on asserted claims and prior art, early disclosure of advice-of-counsel positions tied to willfulness, and claim-construction scheduling worked out at the initial case-management conference. The rules apply to utility-patent infringement suits and related declaratory-judgment actions.

Notable cases. The principal tracked case is Midwest Energy Emissions Corp. et al. v. Evergy, Inc. et al. (No. 5:25-cv-04033, D. Kan.), a consolidated mercury-emissions patent case filed in April 2025 against Evergy utility affiliates, originally assigned to Judge Daniel D. Crabtree and reassigned to Judge John W. Lungstrum, with Magistrate Judge Angel D. Mitchell as referring judge. It is one strand of a wider campaign: the JPML created In re Midwest Energy Emissions Corp. Patent Litigation (MDL No. 3132), transferred to the Southern District of Iowa before Judge Stephen H. Locher on December 12, 2024, with parallel cases in the Western District of Missouri (Judge Beth Phillips). The underlying technology (coal-refining to reduce mercury emissions) has produced a roughly $57 million willful-infringement jury verdict in related litigation, reported by Law360 in September 2025, though that verdict arose outside this court. The second tracked matter is listed only as an untitled "Critical" case; no public details are available.

Judges. The reliably sourced patent judges tied to the tracked docket are District Judge John W. Lungstrum (a senior-status, long-tenured judge who now presides over the Evergy case), District Judge Daniel D. Crabtree (who was initially assigned before reassignment), and Magistrate Judge Angel D. Mitchell (who handles pretrial referral matters). Beyond those names, any ranking of D. Kan. judges by patent activity would be unsourced; the district's full bench roster should be verified against ksd.uscourts.gov.