U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of California; transferred to E.D. Tex. (MDL No. 3190)

I'll verify the court's profile and the MDL transfer with web searches.

Let me gather more specifics on the Eastern District of California's structure, local rules, and patent docket reputation.

Let me verify E.D. Cal.'s patent case volume, notable rulings, and the transfer mechanics of the tracked case.

U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of California (E.D. Cal.) — patent litigation profile

Court overview. The U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of California sits in the Ninth Circuit (Federal Circuit for patent appeals), was created in 1966, and covers 34 counties from Bakersfield to Redding — Sacramento is the headquarters (Robert T. Matsui U.S. Courthouse), with courthouses in Fresno, Bakersfield, Redding and Yosemite. Its bench is highly constrained: six authorized Article III judgeships, unchanged since 1978, for a population of roughly 8.4 million, plus senior and magistrate judges (court submissions to the Ninth Circuit and Congress; court "Judicial Emergency" FAQ). It has been in formal judicial-emergency status for two decades and carries pending caseloads per judgeship close to twice the national average (court's 2022 response to the AO's Biennial Judgeship Survey). Relative to other districts, E.D. Cal. is not a significant patent venue: it does not appear in Lex Machina's most-active-district tables (top ten) for 2020–2022 or 2022–2024, where W.D. Tex., D. Del., E.D. Tex., C.D. Cal. and N.D. Cal. dominate. I could not verify a reliable annual patent-filing count for E.D. Cal. from the sources reviewed, so no number is asserted here. Patent cases are a very small share of a docket driven by criminal cases, prisoner civil rights and habeas, immigration habeas (the court reported ~2,400 new immigration habeas cases in a three-month stretch of 2026, second nationally), water, agriculture and employment matters.

Docket reputation. E.D. Cal. is the opposite of a "rocket docket." The court's own public statements describe civil matters "languishing, at times for 5 years or more," criminal time-to-disposition ranked 93rd of 94 districts, and dozens of civil motions submitted on the papers because hearings are infeasible; one Fresno judge suspended civil hearings entirely at the peak of the vacancy crisis (Chief Judge Mueller's 2022 congressional testimony and 2023 BJS response). There is no published Lex Machina, Unified Patents or Reuters analysis characterizing E.D. Cal. as plaintiff- or defendant-friendly, and its low patent volume makes such rankings statistically meaningless; I did not find a well-sourced E.D. Cal.-specific transfer-grant rate or jury/bench patent trial rate. The one structural, well-documented fact relevant to transfer practice is that the court has historically declined MDL referrals and describes itself as an MDL "sender" district — an explicit consequence of its caseload (2023 BJS response, Chief Judge Mueller). That is directly on point for the tracked case, which left the district by MDL rather than by a § 1404(a) motion.

Local rules and procedures. E.D. Cal. has no local patent rules and no district-wide patent standing order. In California, only N.D. Cal. and S.D. Cal. have adopted patent local rules; C.D. Cal. relies on individual judge orders, and E.D. Cal. is absent from the survey literature on patent-rule adopters (Sedona Conference WG10 materials; BNA/patent-rule surveys). Practice is therefore governed by the court's general Local Rules plus each judge's scheduling and standing orders — meaning no standardized infringement/invalidity contentions timetable, no mandatory claim-construction narrowing, and no fixed Markman track. One distinctive feature: E.D. Cal. Local Rule 1-102(a) is unusually restrictive about standing orders, providing that internal administration may be handled by general order but that "no litigant shall be bound by any General Order" (quoted in the AO/FJC Report and Recommended Guidelines on Standing Orders). Claim construction proceeds ad hoc under Phillips.

Notable tracked matter. The only case this site tracks at the court is Valtrus Innovations Ltd. et al. v. Prime Data Centers, LLC, filed in E.D. Cal. (No. 2:26-cv-02413) and assigned to District Judge Daniel J. Calabretta with Magistrate Judge Carolyn K. Delaney. While a defense motion to stay and related briefing were pending, the JPML created MDL No. 3190, In re: Valtrus Innovations Ltd. Patent Litigation, on August 7, 2026, centralizing seven actions in E.D. Tex. before Judge James Rodney Gilstrap (JPML order and CTO-1/CTO-2 filings). The Prime Data Centers case was transferred in August 2026 and re-docketed as E.D. Tex. No. 2:26-cv-00762; under E.D. Tex. Local Rule CV-7(j) the pending E.D. Cal. motion was terminated as moot and must be re-urged. The Valtrus campaign involves data-center cooling patents (e.g., U.S. 6,718,277; 6,854,287; 6,862,179; 7,031,870; 6,868,682) asserted against dozens of data-center operators such as Equinix, NTT, Cologix, CoreSite, Iron Mountain and Lumen, with parallel IPRs and a supplier declaratory-judgment track involving Vertiv. No noteworthy published E.D. Cal. patent ruling emerged from the search.

Judges. E.D. Cal. maintains no designated patent bench and no Patent Pilot Program-style assignment; patent cases go through ordinary assignment among the six active judgeships. Reliably sourced names relevant here are Judge Daniel J. Calabretta (Sacramento; the assigned judge in the tracked case before transfer) and Magistrate Judge Carolyn K. Delaney; Chief Judge Troy Nunley and Judge Kimberly J. Mueller (former Chief Judge) are the court's most prominent voices on its caseload crisis, with Judge Mueller authoring the court's judicial-emergency submissions. I found no Lex Machina, Patexia or Reuters analysis ranking any E.D. Cal. judge on patent metrics, and I would not infer patent expertise or plaintiff/defendant leanings from this record. For the tracked litigation, the operative judicial figure after transfer is E.D. Tex.'s Judge Gilstrap, with Magistrate Judge Roy S. Payne handling many Marshall Division patent matters.