E.D. Tex. (Gilstrap/Payne)

I'll verify the court's profile with targeted searches before writing.

Court Profile: U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Texas (Gilstrap/Payne docket)

Court overview. The U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Texas sits in the Fifth Circuit, with divisions at Marshall, Tyler, Beaumont, Sherman, Lufkin and Texarkana; patent-heavy divisions are Marshall (Judge Rodney Gilstrap) and Sherman/Plano (Judge Amos Mazzant). It is currently the nation's busiest patent venue. Lex Machina's 2025 Patent Litigation Report found E.D. Tex. handled roughly 1,069 patent cases in 2024 — about 20% of all U.S. district court patent filings and more than twice the next-closest district (N.D. Ill.) — after leading the country in both 2023 and 2024. RPX's 2024 data put the district at 33% of defendants added, first overall and first for NPE litigation. The district had lost share after TC Heartland (2017) to D. Del. and W.D. Tex., and RPX dates its return to the top spot to Q2 2023.

Docket reputation. The "rocket docket" label is historically associated with this district, but current timing data is more nuanced. Lex Machina's Albright-vs.-Gilstrap addendum (cases terminated 2019–2023) shows Gilstrap cases reaching Markman in a median of 358 days and summary judgment/trial in medians of roughly 500-plus days — slower to claim construction than W.D. Tex. (315 days) but substantially faster to SJ/trial than W.D. Tex. (700-plus days each). On transfer: academic analysis (UNC's NC JOLT study of venue and §1404(a)) concluded the district has historically transferred patent cases as often as or more often than the national average, and WilmerHale's 2016 survey reported grant rates climbing from 34% (2014) to 43% (2015) to roughly 57% (2016). However, a Washington University Law Review study of Federal Circuit mandamus (2008–2021) found E.D. Tex. §1404(a) rulings were reversed at a 27.3% rate (18 of 66 petitions), versus 11.5% for all other districts. So defense-side mandamus risk remains materially elevated relative to other venues. Patent cases here are tried to juries (e.g., Marshall defense verdicts for Nokia and Charter Communications reported on the EDTX web log); Lex Machina reports that on substantive resolutions, claimants won more often than claim defendants before Gilstrap, though most cases still end in settlement or on procedural grounds.

Local rules and procedures. E.D. Tex. maintains full Local Patent Rules — among the earliest and most influential in the country, later adapted by other districts — organized around infringement contentions with claim charts (P.R. 3-1/3-2), invalidity contentions and document production (P.R. 3-3/3-4), and a rigid claim-construction sequence: exchange of proposed terms 10 days after invalidity contentions (P.R. 4-1), preliminary constructions and extrinsic evidence 20 days later (P.R. 4-2), joint claim construction and prehearing statement 60 days after invalidity contentions (P.R. 4-3), claim construction discovery within 30 days (P.R. 4-4), and briefing at 45/14/7-day intervals with a Markman hearing about two weeks after the reply (P.R. 4-5). Amendments to contentions under P.R. 3-6(a)(1) require a showing that the court's construction was "unexpected or unforeseeable." The rules contain a dedicated Hatch-Waxman provision (P.R. 3-8) under which the court "intends to set all Hatch-Waxman cases for final pretrial hearing at or near 24 months from the date of the filing of the complaint." General Order 18-10 (Oct. 25, 2018) amended the rules to clarify expert-witness disclosure obligations during claim construction; the district also administers model orders limiting asserted claims and prior art, e-discovery limits, and an optional "Track B" accelerated schedule.

Notable tracked cases and trends. The two cases this site tracks are both Marshall-division Gilstrap/Payne matters. Fleet Connect Solutions LLC v. Somfy Activites SA (No. 2:24-cv-00465, E.D. Tex., filed June 20, 2024) is a serial NPE assertion by Fleet Connect (plaintiff-side counsel James McDonough) against Somfy entities over acquired wireless/telematics patents; the docket shows a consolidation order pulling it into lead case 2:24-cv-00240, with termination on Sept. 17, 2024. Navog LLC v. Sygic a.s. (filed May 16, 2024) appears as an open, unverified entry in the tracked list; I could not independently confirm its docket details, judge assignment, or current status from public sources in this pass, and it should be treated as unconfirmed. Beyond the tracked list, publicly reported activity includes AGIS Software's multi-case campaign before Judge Gilstrap (litigated through §1404(a) transfer disputes), USAA v. PNC (mobile check deposit patents), and sanctions activity, including a Mazzant order reprimanding counsel for AI-hallucinated citations and a separate Rule 11 line of cases (Symbology/Quantum) on baseless venue allegations. These are representative rather than exhaustive.

Judges. Chief Judge Rodney Gilstrap (appointed 2011) is the district's dominant patent figure: Lex Machina attributed 795 new patent assignments to him in 2024, more than six times any other federal judge. Magistrate Judge Roy S. Payne handles pretrial proceedings and claim construction in Gilstrap's Marshall patent cases and issues a high volume of Markman and summary judgment recommendations — the "Gilstrap/Payne" pairing reflected in the tracked cases above. Judge Amos L. Mazzant III (Sherman) succeeded Gilstrap as chief judge in 2025 and carries a substantial patent docket of his own, including significant sanctions and §101 rulings. The district's other district judges include Jeremy Kernodle, J. Campbell Barker, Michael Truncale and Sean Jordan, though I did not verify patent-specific caseload data for them here. I have deliberately avoided labeling any judge as plaintiff- or defendant-friendly beyond what the cited Lex Machina and academic analyses actually report.

Caveat on sources: figures above come from Lex Machina's 2025 Patent Litigation Report and its Albright/Gilstrap addendum, RPX data bytes, Finnegan/Law360 coverage, the E.D. Tex. Local Patent Rules as published on txed.uscourts.gov, and law-review studies of §1404(a) mandamus. Median time-to-trial figures for the district as a whole, and current-year filing counts, were not independently confirmed and are omitted.