W.D. Tex. (Judge Albright)

I'll research the current state of patent litigation in the Western District of Texas before drafting.

Several results indicate major recent changes (Judge Albright's retirement, new Waco judge). Let me verify current facts and the tracked cases.

W.D. Tex. — U.S. District Court for the Western District of Texas (Fifth Circuit; courthouses in San Antonio, Austin, Waco, El Paso, Midland-Odessa, Del Rio, Pecos; Chief Judge Alia Moses). For roughly four years this was the busiest patent venue in the country on the strength of a single judge: Judge Alan D. Albright's Waco docket drew 937 patent cases in 2021, and the district as a whole took about 23–25% of all U.S. patent filings in 2021–22 — before Waco had essentially no patent docket at all (four cases in 2017). That concentration ended with then–Chief Judge Orlando Garcia's July 25, 2022 order randomly assigning new Waco patent cases among twelve district judges (reaffirmed by Chief Judge Moses in December 2022, and tightened in May 2024 and May 2025 to restrict the "related case" pathway). Per RPX, W.D. Tex. was still third nationally in new patent filings in 2025 at roughly 12% and the second-most popular venue for NPE suits that year, though its share is now spread across judges rather than concentrated in one courtroom. Judge Albright retired effective August 31, 2026, and his pending Waco patent cases pass to the newly confirmed Judge Christopher R. Wolfe unless reassigned (he moved 30 such cases to Wolfe in May 2026).

Docket reputation. W.D. Tex. is better described as a formerly accelerated docket than a standing rocket docket. Albright publicly targeted trial within ~24 months of filing, and Law360 reported that more than half of his patent cases reached verdict inside that window; Lex Machina's comparison of cases terminated 2019–2023 found his median time to claim-construction hearing was 315 days (vs. Judge Gilstrap's 358 in E.D. Tex.) but that his median times to summary judgment and trial both exceeded 700 days — longer than Gilstrap's, plausibly reflecting docket volume. District-wide median time to trial reached 32.8 months for the year ending June 2025 (up from 22.4 months in 2020); party submissions in PTAB proceedings cite Judge Albright's own patent-case median rising from 23 months (2022) to 43 months (2025) — treat those latter figures as advocacy-side statistics lifted from Lex Machina, not official court data. The "plaintiff-friendly" label is real but was arguably overstated: Lex Machina found claimants and claim defendants won in near-equal numbers among Albright's cases resolved on substantive grounds (2019–2023), and Law360 reported in 2026 that verdicts in his court were "remarkably even." Two features drove the venue's reputation rather than jury outcomes: (1) transfer practice — Bloomberg Law reported Albright denied about 80% of contested § 1404(a) motions through mid-2021 (national grant rate roughly 50% at the time), and the Federal Circuit issued dozens of mandamus orders against him, including ten in October–November 2021 alone, largely over his failure to decide transfer motions before claim construction; and (2) stays — he almost never stayed cases pending IPR, and PTAB panels frequently cite his time-to-trial statistics when declining Fintiv-based discretionary denials. Judge David Counts of Midland-Odessa, by contrast, had granted no contested transfer or IPR-stay motions as of early 2025 (RPX). Trials are predominantly jury trials; Albright presided over more than 50 patent jury trials, and where many patents were asserted he bifurcated rather than put the full set before one jury.

Local rules and procedures. W.D. Tex. has no district-wide patent local rules comparable to E.D. Tex.'s — practice is set by individual judges' standing orders. Judge Albright's Order Governing Proceedings (OGP) in patent cases (versions 4.0 and later) functioned as the district's de facto patent rulebook: no fact discovery until after the Markman hearing; automatic venue discovery upon the filing of a transfer motion, with the court committing to rule on transfer before any Markman hearing; contention amendment without leave up to two months after Markman; scaled page limits for claim-construction briefs based on the number of patents and an aggregate page cap for dispositive and Daubert motions; claim charts for preliminary invalidity contentions and early § 101 positions; and an email-based discovery-dispute procedure rather than motions to compel. On claim construction, he issued preliminary constructions before the hearing, with the party opposing the court's construction arguing first. Judge Counts adopted a standing order modeled on Albright's one week after the 2022 Waco order. It remains an open question whether Judge Wolfe will adopt these procedures; as of June 2026 he had issued no patent standing order (Sidley/Law360). Assignment practice is now the key procedural variable: the May 2024 and May 2025 orders control Waco patent assignments, Midland-Odessa is not subject to any such rule, and the May 18, 2026 order reallocated the Austin civil docket (Pitman 35%, Davis 35%, Ezra 20%, Rodriguez 10%).

Notable cases. The cases tracked here are a single NPE campaign: CommWorks Solutions, LLC — an acquirer of 3Com-era networking patents (e.g., U.S. Patents 6,832,249; 7,027,465; 7,177,285; 7,911,979; RE44,904) — asserting against cable/ISP defendants in Waco before Judge Albright. CommWorks v. Vyve Broadband was dismissed with prejudice; CommWorks v. Skybeam Acquisition (Rise Broadband) settled with a stipulated dismissal in June 2021; and CommWorks v. Charter Communications / Spectrum Gulf Coast (No. 6:22-cv-00156, filed February 11, 2022, jury demand) remains active. A parallel CommWorks v. Comcast action (6:21-cv-00366) was dismissed in July 2022. That profile — an NPE with acquired patents suing service providers in a fast, no-stay courtroom — is representative of what the district attracted. The best-known trial result remains the March 2021 VLSI v. Intel verdict in Waco, a $2.18 billion jury award; per Law360, Judge Albright oversaw two verdicts at or near $1 billion, the latter of which did not survive appeal. In a more recent and unusual matter, RPX reported that in January 2026 Judge Albright orally granted BMW an anti-suit injunction ordering Onesta IP to terminate its German litigation asserting U.S. patents, with the Federal Circuit temporarily barring the injunction from taking effect — an early flashpoint over the extraterritorial reach of the CJEU's 2025 BSH Hausgeräte v. Electrolux decision.

Judges. Alan D. Albright (Trump appointee, 2018; Waco 2018–2025, Austin 2025–2026; retired August 31, 2026) — the district's dominant patent jurist and author of the OGP; also carried one of the largest backlogs in the Fifth Circuit before departing. Christopher R. Wolfe (commissioned April 23, 2026, Waco) — former federal prosecutor and Texas state district judge, now inherits Albright's pending Waco patent docket; his patent procedures are unannounced. David Counts (Midland-Odessa) — former patent litigator, sole district judge in a division exempt from the random-assignment orders, adopted an Albright-modeled patent standing order, and ranked among the top patent judges nationally in 2024–25 (RPX attributes roughly 95% of that litigation to NPEs, with a large share filed by Ramey LLP). Derek Gilliland (U.S. Magistrate Judge, Waco) — 20+ years of patent trial practice; has handled hundreds of Waco patent matters, frequently presides over voir dire and jury selection, and can try patent cases with party consent. Also relevant: Chief Judge Alia Moses (assignment orders), Robert Pitman and Andrew Davis (Austin), and Leon Schydlower (El Paso, assisting the Waco docket).

Caveat on sources: docket-volume and timing figures above come from RPX Data Bytes, Lex Machina (including its 2024 Albright-vs-Gilstrap addendum), Law360, Bloomberg Law, and law-firm analyses; where statistics originated in IPR briefing rather than a primary court or AOUSC report, I've flagged that. No district-wide W.D. Tex. patent statistics page exists, and no published data yet assesses Judge Wolfe's patent practice.