N.D. Ill. (record heading; Unified Patents link labels Illinois S.D.)

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

N.D. Ill. — Patent Litigation Profile

Court overview. The U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois sits in Chicago (Everett McKinley Dirksen U.S. Courthouse), with divisional points in Rockford and Freeport, and is in the Seventh Circuit; patent appeals go to the Federal Circuit. It is one of the largest federal districts by authorized judgeship strength (roughly two dozen judgeships — check the FJC judgeship table for the current exact number, which I did not independently verify here). By patent filing volume it is a mid-to-upper tier district historically (Lex Machina data cited in the Texas Intellectual Property Law Journal put N.D. Ill. at ~122 / 143 / 186 patent filings in 2018 / 2019 / 2020, about 4.6% of national volume), but it jumped sharply in the 2020s on the back of design-patent "Schedule A" counterfeit filings. Lex Machina's 2025 report ranked N.D. Ill. second nationally for new patent suits in 2024, behind only E.D. Tex., which had over 1,000 new cases — more than double the next district. Note a data conflict: a 2026 CM/ECF-based IPRdaily study reports only 39 NOS-830 patent filings in N.D. Ill. in 2024 (vs. 215 in 2023 and 373 in 2025), which is hard to square with the Lex Machina ranking; I'd treat the ranking as the more reliable signal and the raw-count study as methodology-dependent.

Docket reputation. N.D. Ill. is not a rocket docket for patent cases. LegalMetric's time-to-trial report (Jan. 2013–Apr. 2023) counted only 25 patent trials in the district, with an average of 61.1 months and a median of 49.6 months from filing to trial — roughly four years, with the median case tried less often than in traditional plaintiff-side venues. An IPR petition exhibit filed in 2021 (citing LegalMetric and Docket Navigator) argued the district had not held a patent trial since May 2019, with only two patent trials calendared among 154 active patent cases. I could not verify district-wide transfer-motion grant rates from a published Lex Machina, RPX, or Unified Patents source, so I won't characterize transfer practice; the district is not generally described in the literature as either a magnet for or a routine rejecter of § 1404 transfers. On the plaintiff-friendly question, the strongest sourced data point is asymmetrical and limited to Schedule A design-patent suits: Lex Machina reported that of 232 Schedule A design-patent cases in N.D. Ill. with a case resolution between Jan. 2023 and June 2024, the accused defendant had never won. That says more about the default/TRO dynamics of anonymous online-counterfeiter cases than about conventional two-party patent litigation in the district.

Local rules. N.D. Ill. has its own Local Patent Rules (LPR), effective September 24, 2009, and they are distinctive in several ways. Under LPR 1.1 they apply only to utility patent cases — the district's high-volume design-patent docket is therefore governed by ordinary Rule 26 scheduling and general orders, not the LPR. Key features: early initial infringement/invalidity contentions followed by final contentions (LPR 2.1–2.3, 3.1–3.2); a hard cap of ten claim terms for construction absent good cause, split 5/5 if the parties can't agree, with certification whether each term is outcome-determinative (LPR 4.1(b), amended after 2018 comment period); a counterintuitive briefing order in which the accused infringer files the opening claim construction brief and the patent claimant responds (LPR 4.2), followed by a reply, with a Joint Appendix of the patent and prosecution history; a claim construction hearing within 28 days of the reply brief (LPR 4.3); fact discovery closing before Markman and resuming only after the ruling, ending 42 days thereafter (LPR 1.3); expert reports deferred until after claim construction (LPR 5.1–5.3); advice-of-counsel discovery deferred until 35 days before the close of reopened fact discovery (LPR 3.6); and an automatic default protective order. The LPR committee's stated rationale was to force parties to crystallize theories early and avoid "shifting sands" claim construction (see Oil-Dri Corp. of Am. v. Nestlé Purina Petcare Co., No. 16 C 9179 (N.D. Ill. May 9, 2017) (Kendall, J.)). I did not find a district-wide patent standing order comparable to Delaware's or W.D. Tex.'s claim construction order.

Notable cases and rulings. The single case tracked on this site is Cedar Lane Technologies Inc. v. Motorola Solutions Inc. et al., No. 1:20-cv-03600 (N.D. Ill., filed June 19, 2020), assigned to Judge Andrea R. Wood; plaintiff voluntarily dismissed under Rule 41(a)(1)(A)(i) on July 10, 2020, three weeks after filing. Cedar Lane (a Canadian NPE founded in 2019, per Korean IP Office data behind hundreds of filings, with the large majority resolved by settlement) illustrates the "file-and-dismiss" cadence of the district's NPE docket rather than a litigated outcome. Broader patterns: Unified Patents data reported by Managing IP shows N.D. Ill. design-patent filings rising from 6 in 2021 to 172 in 2024, and Lex Machina found 127 Schedule A design-patent cases in the district in 2023 alone (80% of all such U.S. cases; 54.3% of all N.D. Ill. patent cases). On the other side of the ledger, the district has produced notable defense-side rulings, including Judge Pallmeyer's 2015 award of § 285 fees jointly against Intellect Wireless's counsel in Intellect Wireless Inc. v. Sharp Corp., No. 1:10-cv-06763 (N.D. Ill. Mar. 31, 2015). The district also hosted the headline Motorola Solutions v. Hytera IP trial ($764.6M jury verdict, February 2020) — although that was a trade secret/copyright case, not a patent case.

Judges. The tracked case's only judicial assignment is Judge Andrea R. Wood. For reliably sourced patent experience in the district, the best documented group is the district's Patent Pilot Program cohort: Rebecca R. Pallmeyer (PPP participant since the program's 2011 start; past president of the Richard Linn American Inn of Court), Matthew F. Kennelly (original designated pilot judge and a member of the committee that drafted the LPR), and Thomas M. Durkin (PPP participant) — all three interviewed in Patent Pilot Program Perspectives: Patent Litigation in the Northern District of Illinois, 17 J. Marshall Rev. Intell. Prop. L. 348 (2018). John Robert Blakey and Judge Pallmeyer also appear on the district's civil reassignment wheels (General Order 19-0007). I did not verify current senior-status changes, current patent-case assignment practice (the PPP has lapsed per its statutory term), or any current internal case-assignment order, and I found no published Lex Machina, Unified Patents, or Reuters analysis ranking individual N.D. Ill. judges as plaintiff- or defendant-friendly — so no such characterization is offered.

Data caveat. The record heading for this court is "N.D. Ill.," while one upstream link label reads "Illinois S.D." The tracked Cedar Lane case was filed in the Northern District (1:20-cv-03600), so the N.D. Ill. heading is correct and the "S.D." label appears to be a labeling error in the source feed. The structured case list contains no judge field; Judge Wood's assignment comes from the public docket, not from the tracked data.

Sources: ilnd.uscourts.gov (LPR 1.1, 1.3, 3.6, 4.1–4.3, 5.1–5.3; General Order 19-0007); Lex Machina 2025 Patent Litigation Report and Lex Machina Schedule A blog series; Unified Patents data via Managing IP / Finnegan (Jan. 2025); LegalMetric Time to Trial Report — Northern District of Illinois (Jan. 2013–Apr. 2023), via IPR2021-00421 Exhibit 1025; Texas Intellectual Property Law Journal Vol. 31 (Lex Machina filing data); Jones Day annotated LPR (case law annotations); 17 J. Marshall Rev. Intell. Prop. L. 348 (2018); IPRdaily N.D. Ill. IP filing study (July 2026); FJC judges list; Justia docket 1:20-cv-03600.