U.S. District Court, Eastern District of Michigan (Southern Division)

I'll verify the court's profile, local rules, docket standing, and the tracked case details before writing.

Confirming local patent rules, docket volume, and judges.

Court overview. The U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Michigan, Southern Division, sits in Detroit at the Theodore Levin U.S. Courthouse; the district is in the Sixth Circuit, with patent appeals going to the Federal Circuit. It is a moderate-size patent venue, not a magnet forum: in Lex Machina's 2025 Patent Litigation Report, the ten most active districts for cases filed 2022–2024 were E.D. Tex. (2,166), W.D. Tex. (1,772), D. Del. (1,491), N.D. Ill. (877), C.D. Cal. (595), D.N.J. (473), N.D. Cal. (383), S.D.N.Y. (310), N.D. Tex. (227) and S.D. Fla. (217) — E.D. Mich. does not appear in that top ten. I could not verify an exact annual E.D. Mich. patent-filing count from a published source, so treat any specific figure with caution. The district's patent docket skews toward the region's automotive and manufacturing base (OEMs, Tier 1 suppliers, components), as reflected in the tracked case and the examples below.

Patent docket reputation. There is no published support for calling this a "rocket docket," and no court-specific time-to-trial or transfer statistics for E.D. Mich. were available from the sources reviewed. For national context, Lex Machina reports that in non-ANDA patent cases terminated 2022–2024, the median time to a claim construction hearing was 410 days, to a summary-judgment decision 848 days, and to trial 1,040 days. One often-cited but dated data point: a 2008 Michigan Bar Journal article (Abbatt/Tuttle) cited a PricewaterhouseCoopers study of 25 patent and trademark cases decided in E.D. Mich. between 1996 and 2006, finding plaintiffs won 3 of 25 (about 12 percent), which the survey described as the lowest plaintiff win rate nationwide; that is a small, decades-old sample, not a current Lex Machina/Unified Patents measure, and I found no modern analysis labeling this district or its judges as plaintiff- or defendant-friendly. On venue, the clearest documented pattern is defensive consolidation rather than transfer gaming: in the tracked case, plaintiff ATI's infringement suit against Delphi's OEM customers, filed in N.D. Tex., was consolidated into Delphi's declaratory-judgment action in E.D. Mich., where the automotive supply-chain defendants were located (Law.com/Am Law Litigation Daily; Fed. Cir. No. 11-1292).

Local rules and procedures. E.D. Mich. has no district-wide local patent rules of the E.D. Tex. or N.D. Cal. type; the District's published Local Rules contain no patent chapter, and as recently as 2008 practitioners there were publishing "a plea for local rules" in the state bar journal, with proposals forwarded to the court's Local Rules Advisory Committee. Instead, the court uses judge-level model patent scheduling orders — the district website posts a "Model Case Management and Scheduling Order for Patent Cases" and a "Sample Order to Attend Scheduling Conference in a Patent Case," and dockets show a "Model Rule 26(f) Report and Stipulated Scheduling Order for Patent Infringement Cases." Typical features of the model patent CMO (see the version posted for Judge David M. Lawson) include an off-the-record technology tutorial before briefing, 20-page opening claim construction briefs and 5-page replies, a four-column claim interpretation schedule, a mandatory in-person meet-and-confer at the courthouse within two weeks after service of the draft reply brief, a claim construction hearing at which live testimony is generally not heard (up to one hour per side only by leave), and amendment of infringement/invalidity contentions no later than one month after the claim construction ruling. Contentions are enforced strictly: in Webasto Thermo & Comfort N. Am. v. Bestop, No. 2:16-cv-13456 (E.D. Mich. 2019) (Borman, J.), the court upheld a special master's recommendation to strike late-amended non-infringement and invalidity contentions, applying O2 Micro's good-cause standard. Also relevant to out-of-state patent litigants: E.D. Mich. LR 83.20 requires membership in the court's bar (no pro hac vice) and local counsel for non-Michigan State Bar members; LR 7.1 briefing limits are strictly enforced, LR 37.1 requires a discovery conference before motions, and the district has a model ESI order.

Notable cases. The one case this site tracks is Automotive Technologies International, Inc. v. Delphi Corporation et al., filed March 2008 in the Southern Division (No. 2:08-cv-11048, later consolidated with No. 10-cv-10647) before Judge Robert H. Cleland. It resolved by judgment following a 46-page summary-judgment opinion, 776 F. Supp. 2d 469 (E.D. Mich. 2011), holding three ATI patents anticipated and a fourth ('945, bladder-based occupant sensors) obvious, and invalidating four patents against Delphi and its OEM customers (GM, Ford, Nissan, Hyundai, Mercedes, Volvo, Fuji). The Federal Circuit (No. 11-1292, nonprecedential order of July 19, 2011) remanded after ATI moved unopposed to vacate a portion of the summary judgment. Other E.D. Mich. patent decisions of note found in research: Automotive Technologies Int'l v. BMW of N. America, 378 F. Supp. 2d 780 (E.D. Mich. 2005) (invalidity on summary judgment); Chrimar Systems v. Cisco Systems, 318 F. Supp. 2d 476 (E.D. Mich. 2004); Seal-Flex v. W.R. Dougherty (E.D. Mich. 2003) (reasonable-royalty bench trial); and the current Sias v. Apple, No. 2:25-cv-12080 (Leitman, J.), where a scheduling order resets jury trial to June 2027 — consistent with roughly two-year case tracks in this district.

Judges. Judge Robert H. Cleland authored the rulings in the tracked case (ATI v. Delphi) and is the most directly relevant name to this court's patent profile. Judge Paul D. Borman (Southern Division) handled Webasto v. Bestop, including the 2019 post-claim-construction contention-amendment opinion. Judge David M. Lawson's model patent case-management order is published on the court's website and is one of the district's templates for patent case scheduling; the same docket sample shows Judge Robert J. White using the "Model Rule 26(f) Report and Stipulated Scheduling Order for Patent Infringement Cases." The district is led by Chief Judge Stephen J. Murphy III, and its local rules package also lists Judges Ludington, Goldsmith, Drain, Berg, Levy, Michelson, Leitman, Parker, Kumar, Behm, Grey, DeClercq, McMillon and White. I did not verify current senior-status rosters or any judge-level Lex Machina win-rate analytics for this district, so no judge is characterized here as plaintiff- or defendant-friendly.