United States District Court for the Middle District of Florida, Orlando Division

Court overview. The United States District Court for the Middle District of Florida (M.D. Fla.) sits in the Eleventh Circuit and operates five divisions — Jacksonville, Orlando, Tampa, Fort Myers, and Ocala — with the tracked case in the Orlando Division. It is not a top-volume patent filing venue; the dockets tracked on this site include only one M.D. Fla. case. Most patent litigation in the U.S. concentrates in Delaware, the Eastern and Western Districts of Texas, and the Central/Northern Districts of California, and M.D. Fla. is generally a secondary venue whose patent inventory skews toward operating-company disputes and suits with a Florida nexus (e.g., Florida-based retailers, banks, and technology companies).

Patent docket reputation. M.D. Fla. is not typically described as a "rocket docket" in the modern sense, but it has a historical reputation as comparatively fast and favorable to patent owners. A widely cited 2010 Stanford study by Mark Lemley (analyzing cases resolved by March 2010) ranked M.D. Fla. among the top five most plaintiff-friendly districts, with a ~46% patentee win rate, a roughly two-year median time to trial, and a trial rate around 4% of filed cases. That data is dated, and I found no recent Lex Machina, Unified Patents, or RPX analysis in this search that quantifies the court's current win rates, transfer-grant rates, or Markman outcomes — so those figures should not be characterized as current. Jury trials are the norm (jury demands are standard in M.D. Fla. patent complaints), and judges in the district regularly run claim-construction hearings under formal schedules.

Local rules and procedures. M.D. Fla. has no standalone patent local rules comparable to E.D. Tex. or N.D. Cal.; instead, patent case management is driven by the district's Local Rules plus judge- and division-specific "Case Management and Scheduling Orders in Patent Cases" and "Case Management Report in Patent Cases" forms posted on the court's website (e.g., forms for Judge Berger in Orlando and Judge Steele/Barber in Fort Myers). The standardized patent orders require: exchange (but not filing) of infringement and invalidity contentions with element-by-element claim charts and prior-art disclosures; a joint claim construction statement capped at 25 pages and generally no more than 10 disputed terms; opening and response claim-construction briefs capped at 30 pages; a technology tutorial; and a claim-construction hearing capped at six hours. Parties must also notify the court immediately if IPR is sought and state whether they will seek a stay. Local Rule 3.02 requires a case management report within 40 days of a defendant's appearance — and the court has dismissed cases sua sponte for non-compliance (e.g., MCOM IP, LLC v. EverBank, N.A., 3:23-cv-00975). Discovery is capped at 10 depositions per side and 25 interrogatories absent leave.

Notable cases and rulings. The court's sole tracked case, Sam's West, Inc. and Walmart Apollo, LLC v. BJ's Wholesale Club Holdings, Inc. (6:22-cv-00587, Orlando), is a good illustration of the district's approach to IPR stays. Walmart's Sam's Club unit sued BJ's in March 2022 over four mobile self-checkout patents covering the BJ's ExpressPay app. BJ's filed seven IPR petitions; the court stayed the case in November 2022 and, on July 31, 2023, denied Sam's motion to partially lift the stay, reasoning that pending PTAB review could simplify all four patents and expressly rejecting bifurcation as inefficient ("no gain in efficiency where it and the parties must engage in multiple periods of discovery, multiple hearings addressing claim construction, multiple summary judgment motions, and (perhaps) multiple trials"). After the Federal Circuit affirmed PTAB decisions invalidating the '435 patent in April 2026, the parties agreed in June 2026 to lift the stay with the plaintiffs withdrawing the '435 counts. Other notable patent matters on the M.D. Fla. docket include WhereverTV v. Comcast (2:18-cv-529, Fort Myers) and Nichia Corp. v. Lighting Science Group (6:19-cv-1333, Orlando).

Judges. Judge Wendy W. Berger (active, Orlando Division, appointed 2019) was the district judge initially assigned to the tracked Sam's West case (with Magistrate Judge David A. Baker), and her chambers have issued a distinctive patent-specific case management report form. Judge William F. Jung (Tampa, appointed 2018), a former AUSA and complex-litigation trial lawyer, has handled patent/copyright cases such as 2BCom LLC v. Walmart Inc. (8:22-cv-00400). Senior Judge Charlene Honeywell (Tampa) took senior status in December 2023 after a long civil docket in the district. Magistrate judges commonly manage discovery and stays in patent cases; Baker, Robert M. Norway, Embry J. Kidd, and Sean P. Flynn appear on the patent dockets reviewed here. I found no published Lex Machina, Unified Patents, or Reuters analysis characterizing any of these judges as systematically plaintiff- or defendant-leaning, so no such characterization is made here.