E.D. Tex. (Marshall Div.), Judge Rodney Gilstrap

I'll verify the court's profile with web research before writing.

Court profile: U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Texas, Marshall Division

Court overview. The U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Texas sits in the Fifth Circuit for general federal matters; patent appeals from it go to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit. The district has multiple divisions (Marshall, Tyler, Beaumont, Sherman, Texarkana, Lufkin), with Marshall — the division relevant here — in Harrison County, roughly midway between Dallas and Shreveport. Per Lex Machina's 2025 Patent Litigation Report, E.D. Tex. led all districts in new patent filings in both 2023 and 2024, with over 1,000 new patent suits in 2024 — more than twice the next-closest district (N.D. Ill.). RPX reported E.D. Tex. accounted for roughly 33% of defendants added in 2024 patent litigation nationally, and Docket Navigator/IAM put its 2024 share at about 28% of all U.S. patent suits. Assignment within the division is concentrated: Lex Machina has reported that Judge Gilstrap drew between 90% and 100% of Marshall Division civil filings in recent years.

Patent docket reputation. E.D. Tex. is still commonly described as a plaintiff-leaning patent venue, and the "rocket docket" label persists, though the data are more nuanced than the slogan. Post-TC Heartland (2017), the district lost share to Delaware and the Western District of Texas, then reclaimed the top spot from Q2 2023 onward after the District of Delaware's disclosure controversy and the W.D. Tex.'s case-assignment rule change cooled those venues (RPX, Finnegan/Lex Machina). On speed, Docket Navigator/IAM analysis of cases terminated in 2024 found E.D. Tex. reached jury verdict in a median of about 21 months versus a roughly 37-month national average; Lex Machina's 2019–2023 milestone data showed Gilstrap cases reaching Markman in a median of ~358 days and summary judgment/trial milestones in medians "over 500 days." Time-to-trial is not automatic, however: PTAB institution decisions have cited E.D. Tex. docket control orders' repeated "Original Deadline"/"Amended Change" continuances in applying Fintiv. Juries, not benches, decide the large patent damages cases in Marshall. Published transfer-grant-rate statistics specific to this division post-TC Heartland did not surface in this review — treat any precise percentage with caution.

Local rules and procedures. The district maintains its own Local Patent Rules (P.R. 3-1 through 4-6), which govern infringement and invalidity contentions, the exchange of claim terms and proposed constructions, claim construction discovery, and briefing (the Markman hearing is generally set two weeks after the reply brief, subject to the court's convenience). The court also uses a Model Order Focusing Patent Claims and Prior Art (Oct. 29, 2013) capping asserted claims and references, plus an optional "Track B" accelerated schedule. Judge Gilstrap supplements these with standing orders that are notable for cost control: a subject-matter eligibility contentions requirement for § 101 challenges (and a letter-brief leave requirement for pre-Markman Alice motions), a discovery meet-and-confer order (with page caps on discovery motions and a lead/local-counsel conferral requirement), a standing order on motions in limine (a set of standardized limine rulings), and an amended standing order on exhibits limiting joint and per-side exhibit counts (reported at 75 joint / 30 per side in patent cases).

Notable cases. The tracked case here is Greenthread, LLC v. Texas Instruments Inc., No. 2:23-cv-00157 (E.D. Tex., filed April 6, 2023). The tracked record lists it as likely stayed or administratively closed pending PTAB proceedings, with the district-court outcome unconfirmed. The parallel PTAB proceedings involving onsemi and TI are well documented: the Board's February 19, 2025 Final Written Decision in IPR2023-01243 held the challenged claims of U.S. Patent 10,510,842 unpatentable; the Acting Director granted review on April 24, 2025, vacated the decision, and remanded on privity/discovery and claim-construction-order issues; on remand the Board again found all challenged claims unpatentable (2025). More broadly, Marshall juries in Judge Gilstrap's court produced several of the district's headline verdicts, including G+ Communications v. Samsung (~$142 million on two of three asserted patents, with the third found not infringed and later held ineligible; JMOL denied), and Netlist v. Samsung (a $303 million verdict and a later $118 million willfulness verdict in Marshall, with JMOLs denied and injunctive relief denied because the lump-sum award undercut irreparable harm). Gilstrap has also dismissed a series of § 101 challenges in the "Ramey" campaign patents (dozens of cases filed since mid-2024).

Judges. Judge James Rodney Gilstrap (Marshall) is the dominant patent judge here — Lex Machina reported roughly 795 new patent cases assigned to him in 2024, more than six times any other federal judge, and the Judicial Panel on Multidistrict Litigation briefing has cited Lex Machina figures of ~9,871 patent cases, 690 Markman hearings, and 197 trials over his tenure. Magistrate Judge Roy S. Payne (Marshall) handles substantial claim construction, discovery, and pretrial work in Marshall patent cases, including presiding at pretrial conferences. Judge Robert W. Schroeder III (Texarkana) is co-author with Gilstrap of standing orders and handles a share of the district's patent docket (e.g., AX Wireless v. Dell). Chief Judge Amos Mazzant succeeded Gilstrap as chief judge (per the 2024 E.D. Tex. Bench Bar report), and is a named district judge in patent matters. Note that the tracked case list above is too thin (one case, one judge) to support any broader inference about which judges see the district's patent volume — that picture comes from the third-party analytics cited above.

Sourcing note: docket-volume and timing figures come from Lex Machina's 2025 Patent Litigation Report and its Albright/Gilstrap addendum, RPX data bytes, and Docket Navigator/IAM reporting; procedural details come from E.D. Tex. local patent rules materials, the court's standing orders as reproduced in practitioner commentary, and the E.D. Tex. weblog. No independent AOUSC or Federal Judicial Center tables were reviewed for this profile, and no statistic here is estimated.