S.D. Florida

Court Profile: U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida

Court overview. The U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida (S.D. Fla.), a trial court in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit, sits in four divisions — Miami, Fort Lauderdale, West Palm Beach, and Fort Pierce — with its principal courthouse in Miami. Its active patent docket is modest by national standards: the court is not a top-tier patent venue on the order of the District of Delaware, E.D. Tex., or W.D. Tex., though public docket aggregators (Justia) show roughly 1,900 historical patent cases (Nature of Suit 830) filed in the district. A substantial share of recent filings are "Schedule A" counterfeiting actions and Hatch-Waxman/ANDA disputes rather than high-volume NPE campaigns, and the site currently tracks just one active case here (RPX/Justia docket data).

Patent docket reputation. S.D. Fla. is not a "rocket docket" in the Eastern District of Virginia sense, but its civil docket has a reputation for efficient case management, and patent cases can move quickly — e.g., Sanofi-Aventis v. Apotex (0:07-cv-61800), an ANDA case before then-Chief Judge Federico Moreno, was filed in December 2007 and terminated by April 2008. The district is not generally regarded as a plaintiff-friendly patent venue; post-TC Heartland, venue is frequently contested where defendants lack a regular Florida place of business, and the court's docket skews toward cases tied to defendants' actual Florida operations (cruise lines, Garmin, Samsung's Miami affiliate). Jury trials do occur — notably the 2018 Prisua Engineering Corp. v. Samsung Electronics verdict before Chief Judge K. Michael Moore (1:16-cv-21761-KMM) — but I found no published Lex Machina/Unified Patents analysis characterizing the district's transfer-grant rates or trial outcomes, so those specifics should not be overstated.

Local rules and procedures. S.D. Fla. operates under the district's general Local Rules and does not maintain a specialized local patent rules regime or standing claim-construction order comparable to E.D. Tex.'s patent rules or W.D. Tex.'s Markman order (court's Local Rules). Patent cases therefore proceed through ordinary scheduling orders, with Markman briefing handled via case-specific schedules, magistrate-judge referrals for discovery (e.g., Magistrate Judges Edwin G. Torres and Chris M. McAilley appear throughout the docket), and standard AO 120 notices to the PTO and pro hac vice practice visible in the Justia docket sheets.

Notable cases. The tracked case here, HyperQuery LLC v. Garmin Intl Inc. (filed Feb. 17, 2026), ended in a voluntary dismissal without prejudice — consistent with a cluster of Garmin patent suits filed in S.D. Fla., including Peregrine Data LLC v. Garmin International (0:25-cv-60317/60318, 2025). The district's most prominent recent patent trial was Prisua Engineering Corp. v. Samsung Electronics (2016–2018), which yielded a Miami jury verdict for the plaintiff on smartphone video-capture patents. Older Hatch-Waxman work (Sanofi-Aventis v. Apotex) reflects a steady stream of pharmaceutical patent litigation in the Fort Lauderdale division.

Judges. Chief Judge Cecilia M. Altonaga, who has led the court since mid-2023, is the most prominent current patent-scheduling judge (her signature appears on 2025 docket orders). Senior/former Chief Judge K. Michael Moore presided over Prisua v. Samsung, the district's highest-profile patent trial in recent years. Other judges currently taking patent filings include Judge Roy K. Altman (Sea Swivel Inc. v. Rhodan Marine Systems, 1:25-cv-23581, per Law.com Radar), Judge Raag Singhal, and Senior Judge Paul C. Huck (Ontel Products v. EHT, 1:24-cv-20609). The assigned judge for the tracked HyperQuery case was not provided in the available data.