U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois; pending in MDL No. 3190, E.D. Tex.

I'll verify the key facts before writing.

Court overview

The U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois (N.D. Ill.) sits in the Seventh Circuit, with its principal seat at the Everett McKinley Dirksen U.S. Courthouse in Chicago and a Western Division in Rockford. Patent appeals, however, go to the Federal Circuit under 28 U.S.C. § 1295. By volume, N.D. Ill. is a top-tier patent venue rather than a niche one: Lex Machina's 2025 Patent Litigation Report ranked it second nationally in new patent suits in 2024, with 426 filings (up from 235 in 2023 and 216 in 2022; 8.2% of all U.S. patent cases over 2022–2024). IAM reported that design patent filings rose ~38% year-over-year in 2024 and that nearly half of them landed in N.D. Ill. The bench is large (well over twenty authorized district judgeships, distributed across seven divisions), so patent cases are randomly assigned and dispersed across many judges.

Patent docket reputation

N.D. Ill. is not a "rocket docket" in the Eastern or Western District of Texas sense. Its patent volume is driven largely by two distinct streams: (1) design-patent and "Schedule A" Doe cases against anonymous online sellers, which are typically resolved by TRO/preliminary injunction, default judgment, or voluntary dismissal rather than trial; and (2) conventional, fully litigated utility-patent cases involving Chicago-area corporate defendants (pharma, medical devices, telecom, consumer products). The Schedule A stream has cooled somewhat since 2025: Judge Kness stayed proceedings in 50+ Schedule A cases to reconsider ex parte TRO practice and mass joinder, and Judges Durkin, Daniel, Ellis, and Wood have issued rulings skeptical of aspects of those cases, while Chief Judge Kendall has taken a more permissive view of joinder (Chicago IP Litigation / Illinois Lawyer Now, June 2025). Whether N.D. Ill. is "plaintiff-friendly" is best judged by practice type: Winston & Strawn (Feb. 2025) documented an asymmetry in the Schedule A context — N.D. Ill. routinely exercises personal jurisdiction over out-of-state e-commerce sellers, but has dismissed declaratory-judgment suits brought by foreign sellers against patent owners (Zhifu Network Technology v. Core Home Fitness; Aixining Trading v. Nengwu He) for lack of personal jurisdiction and improper venue. I did not find a verified, district-specific Lex Machina or Unified Patents statistic for N.D. Ill.'s § 1404(a) transfer grant rate or median time-to-trial; national medians (roughly 1,090 days to trial, per Lex Machina) should not be imputed to this district.

Local rules and procedures

N.D. Ill. is one of a handful of districts with formal Local Patent Rules (LPR), effective September 24, 2009 and amended in 2013 and 2018. Distinctive features, drawn from the rules text and the Jones Day annotated LPR compilation (15th anniversary edition, 2024):

• Initial disclosures pull forward substantive contentions. Patent-specific disclosures are served with (or shortly after) Rule 26(a)(1) disclosures, with document production.
• Claim and reference limits. Initial infringement contentions are capped at 25 claims per patent / 50 total; initial invalidity contentions at 25 prior art references; conclusory denials are expressly prohibited.
• Claim construction sits near the end of fact discovery, and — unusually — the accused infringer files the opening claim construction brief, with the patentee responding (the drafters reasoned that a patentee often argues plain meaning and should not go first). No more than 10 terms are construed absent good cause.
• Fact discovery does not resume as of right after the claim construction ruling; the party seeking more must move and justify it.
• Automatic default protective order (LPR Appendix B) takes effect on the date of initial disclosures.
• Standalone ESI rules (from the 2013 amendments) presumptively limit email discovery to five custodians and five search terms per producing party, with cost-shifting for excess.
• Courts presume patent cases will track LPR deadlines; deviations require good cause. Judge Tharp's public patent-case page, for example, requires a joint report per LPR Appendix A at least seven days before the initial status hearing.

Notable tracked cases and public rulings

The two tracked matters — Valtrus Innovations Ltd. v. NTT Global Data Centers Americas, Inc. and Key Patent Innovations Ltd. v. Netrality Properties, LP — were filed in N.D. Ill. in April 2026 (ILN/1:26-cv-03926, -03929) and were among the actions centralized into MDL No. 3190, In re: Valtrus Innovations Ltd. Patent Litigation, before the Eastern District of Texas (Marshall/Beaumont assignment; the related E.D. Tex. docket Valtrus v. Lumen Technologies, No. 2:26-cv-00670, is assigned to Chief Judge Rodney Gilstrap). The MDL consolidated parallel actions from the Northern District of Illinois, Western District of Louisiana, District of New Jersey, and both Texas districts, reflecting an NPE campaign by Key Patent Innovations / Valtrus (disclosed affiliate: New PP Licensing LLC) against data center and colocation operators — NTT, Netrality, Lumen, STACK, CoreSite, Cologix, Iron Mountain, H5, Prime Data Centers, EvoDC — with Vertiv intervening. Publicly, the JPML briefing record shows defendants opposing centralization; a defense-side extension motion was granted in part by the Panel clerk with "[n]o further extensions … absent extraordinary circumstances." Practically, these cases will be litigated under E.D. Tex. procedure, not the N.D. Ill. LPRs.

For broader N.D. Ill. precedent, the district's most consequential patent rulings include the Motorola Solutions v. Hytera trade-secret/patent litigation (large verdict, upheld on Seventh Circuit review) and the current wave of Schedule A design-patent and personal-jurisdiction decisions discussed above.

Judges

Reliably sourced N.D. Ill. patent-relevant judges include:

• Judge John J. Tharp, Jr. — designated presiding judge on Key Patent Innovations v. Netrality before MDL transfer; maintains a public patent-case page adopting the LPRs by default.
• Judge Matthew F. Kennelly — chaired the multi-judge/lawyer committee that drafted the Local Patent Rules; the LPRs' structure reflects that drafting group (which also included Judges Zagel, St. Eve, Holderman, and Magistrate Judge Schenkier).
• Chief Judge Virginia M. Kendall — has ruled on design-patent preliminary injunctions and on joinder in Schedule A cases.
• Judge Sara L. Ellis, Judge Franklin U. Valderrama, Judge Jeremy C. Daniel, Judge Nancy L. Maldonado-era name partners aside, and Judge Abraham "Abe" Kness — each has published notable Schedule A / design-patent rulings (Kness's blanket stays; Ellis's Rule 11 dismissal in Meihua Yan; Valderrama's dismissal in Bala Bangles for failure to identify accused products).

I have not found published Lex Machina, Unified Patents, or Reuters analysis labeling any individual N.D. Ill. judge as systematically plaintiff- or defendant-friendly in patent cases, and I have not stated such characterizations.