U.S. District Court for the District of Vermont

I'll research the District of Vermont's patent litigation landscape before writing.

Let me dig into local rules, judges, and the tracked MPHJ case.

Let me confirm the judges and Vermont's local rules structure.

U.S. District Court for the District of Vermont — Patent Litigation Profile

Court overview. The U.S. District Court for the District of Vermont (D. Vt.) sits in the Second Circuit and covers the entire state of Vermont, one of the smallest states by population. It is a single district without statutory divisions; judges sit in Burlington and Rutland and travel as needed (courtrules.net; vtd.uscourts.gov). Patent filings are a very small slice of an already small docket: Justia's patent-filtered index for the district lists on the order of 55 patent cases across the 2000s, i.e., a handful of new infringement suits per year, placing D. Vt. at or near the bottom of federal districts by patent volume. Note that Justia's browse is not a complete statistical count; verified annual figures for D. Vt. are not routinely broken out in Lex Machina, Unified Patents, or RPX district rankings because the volume falls below those reports' reporting thresholds.

Patent docket reputation. The district is not a "rocket docket," and there is no published Lex Machina, Unified Patents, or Reuters analysis characterizing it as a plaintiff-preferred venue — its low filing volume is the main structural reason. No district-specific transfer-rate or time-to-trial statistics for D. Vt. patent cases are well sourced; § 1404/1406 motions appear to be decided case by case, and I could not verify a published trend. Claim construction timing is not fixed by a standing patent order but is negotiated through the discovery schedule (see below). Both jury and bench practice exist: the tracked Vermont Safety Developments case carried a jury demand, while the Hatch-Waxman case UCB, Inc. v. Mylan Technologies Inc., No. 2:22-cv-00216, was filed with no jury demand, which is typical of ANDA litigation.

Local rules and procedures. D. Vt. has no local patent rules comparable to the Eastern or Western District of Texas. Instead, civil cases run on a court-wide stipulated discovery schedule under the local rules (the Vermont Safety Developments docket cites "Local Rule 26(a)(2)"), and the parties build claim construction into that schedule themselves — joint claim construction statement, opening and responsive briefs, a Markman hearing, then phased merits discovery keyed to the court's claim construction ruling (Second Amended Stipulated Discovery Schedule, VSD v. Head Sport, No. 2:23-cv-00089). The court also uses an Early Neutral Evaluation (ENE) program in civil cases — recent patent dockets show ENE letters, evaluator assignment, and stipulated discovery orders as standard early steps (e.g., Liquid Gold Hair, LLC v. Ogee, Inc., No. 2:26-cv-00106) (CourtListener).

Notable cases and rulings. The most consequential patent-related ruling from D. Vt. is State of Vermont v. MPHJ Technology Investments, LLC, No. 2:13-cv-00170, in which Judge William K. Sessions III granted the State's motion to remand on April 14, 2014, holding the Attorney General's consumer-protection action over MPHJ's "scanner troll" demand letters did not raise a substantial federal patent question (Justia docket). The Federal Circuit dismissed MPHJ's appeal on August 11, 2014, finding no jurisdiction under 28 U.S.C. § 1447(d) (Newman, J.) (National Law Review; IPWatchdog). Among the site's tracked cases, MPHJ Technology Investments, LLC v. GBCblue — filed June 21, 2013 and dismissed — is a short-lived entry from the same demand-letter campaign. The tracked list also carries a second, currently untitled/unresolved entry. Beyond those, the district's more recent patent work includes UCB, Inc. v. Mylan Technologies Inc. (Neupro/rotigotine patch patents against a Vermont-based manufacturer) and Vermont Safety Developments LLC v. Head Sport GmbH, No. 2:23-cv-00089, a ski-binding case that ran in parallel with PTAB IPR2024-01099.

Judges. D. Vt. has three active and two senior Article III judges: Chief Judge Christina Reiss (the current chief; handled the UCB v. Mylan ANDA litigation), District Judge Mary Kay Lanthier (confirmed September 2024, sworn in by Chief Judge Reiss, filling the seat vacated when Geoffrey W. Crawford took senior status — she has drawn recent patent filings), Senior Judge Geoffrey W. Crawford (chief judge 2017–2024; presided over Vermont Safety Developments v. Head Sport), and Senior Judge William K. Sessions III (author of the MPHJ remand opinion). I could not confirm the assigned judge on the tracked MPHJ v. GBCblue docket. Published Lex Machina or Unified Patents judge-level outcome analysis for these judges is not available at meaningful sample sizes given the district's patent volume, so no characterization of any judge as plaintiff- or defendant-friendly is warranted.