W.D. Tex. (Judge Counts)

I'll verify the current state of the W.D. Tex. patent docket before writing.

Interesting — the docket has shifted materially. Let me verify the current state of the Waco/Midland dockets and the tracked case.

Now let me verify the transfer/venue practice, the current assignment rules, and notable rulings.

W.D. Tex. (Judge Counts) — Patent Litigation Profile

Court overview. The U.S. District Court for the Western District of Texas sits in the Fifth Circuit and is one of the largest districts geographically, with divisions in Waco, Austin, Midland-Odessa, San Antonio, El Paso, Del Rio and Pecos. The tracked case here — CommWorks Solutions, LLC v. STMicroelectronics, Inc., No. 7:25-cv-00363 — was filed in the Midland-Odessa Division and assigned to District Judge Walter David Counts III. That division placement matters: it reflects the post-2022 migration of patent filings away from Waco and toward the one-judge Midland-Odessa Division. Lex Machina's 2026 report puts the district at roughly 531 patent cases filed in 2025 (about 11–12% of national filings), behind the Eastern District of Texas (1,245 cases, 25.7%) and roughly level with Delaware; RPX ranked W.D. Tex. third among districts and second among venues for NPE suits in 2025. For scale, at its 2021–2022 peak Judge Alan Albright's Waco courtroom alone handled roughly 23–25% of all U.S. patent cases.

Docket reputation. The district's "rocket docket" label traces to Judge Albright's case-management orders, which set early trial dates and pushed parties to a Markman hearing quickly. Lex Machina's comparison of Albright and Judge Rodney Gilstrap (2019–2023 terminations) found Albright's cases reached claim construction in a median of ~315 days (faster than Gilstrap's ~358), but reached summary judgment and trial in medians of over 700 days each — slower than Gilstrap's ~500 days — a result Lex Machina attributed to docket volume. On transfer practice, the district's reputation is more complicated than the shorthand suggests: Albright was historically restrictive on § 1404(a), and in 2021 the Federal Circuit granted 60% (18 of 30) of the § 1404(a) mandamus petitions against him, a well-documented outlier versus the court's historical ~10% grant rate. That pressure abated as Albright's caseload shrank (Keker Van Nest CLE materials, Sept. 2025). As to whether the district is "plaintiff-friendly," the best-sourced data point is Lex Machina's finding that among Albright's cases resolved on substantive grounds, claimants and claim defendants prevailed in nearly equal numbers — i.e., not a clear plaintiff win-rate advantage. The tracked CommWorks case is a poor bellwether: it was a Rule 41(a)(1) voluntary dismissal with prejudice 70 days after filing, with no claim construction or merits ruling.

Local rules and procedures. W.D. Tex. has no district-wide patent local rules comparable to the Eastern District of Texas'. Practice is governed largely by individual judges' standing orders, the template for which is Judge Albright's Order Governing Proceedings in Patent Cases. Distinctive features include: fact discovery stayed until after the Markman hearing (except venue, jurisdictional and claim-construction discovery); preliminary infringement contentions due seven days before the Rule 16 conference and invalidity contentions seven weeks after; specific page limits for Markman briefs scaled to the number of asserted patents; an aggregate page cap (rather than a motion-count cap) for dispositive and Daubert motions; ESI/email discovery presumptively unavailable absent good cause; and a standing referral of discovery disputes to a magistrate judge (historically Magistrate Judge Derek Gilliland in Waco). Albright also issued preliminary claim constructions in advance of the Markman hearing, with the party opposing the court's construction arguing first. Judge Counts adopted a patent standing order closely modeled on Albright's in August 2022.

Venue architecture and notable rulings. The single most consequential procedural fact is that patent plaintiffs can no longer guarantee a specific judge in Waco. Then-Chief Judge Orlando Garcia's July 25, 2022 order randomized Waco patent cases across the district's judges; Chief Judge Alia Moses continued the practice in December 2022, tightened the related-case pathway on May 30, 2024, and reaffirmed it in May 2025. The May 18, 2026 amended order assigning the business of the court keeps Waco under the May 2024 regime, but a separate May 2026 order (per MLex) restores a route to venue certainty through Midland-Odessa. Among notable public rulings: Judge Albright orally granted BMW an anti-suit injunction on January 13, 2026, ordering Onesta IP to terminate its parallel German action filed in the wake of the CJEU's BSH Hausgeräte v. Electrolux decision — the Federal Circuit temporarily stayed the injunction pending appeal. On September 9, 2025, the Federal Circuit in Future Link Systems, LLC v. Realtek Semiconductor Corp. affirmed Albright's conversion of a voluntary dismissal to one with prejudice as a sanction and held Realtek a prevailing party under 35 U.S.C. § 285. Widely reported Waco patent verdicts (e.g., the 2021 VLSI v. Intel jury award) illustrate that jury trials, not bench trials, are the norm for tried patent cases in the district, though most cases terminate before trial by settlement or procedural disposition.

Judges to know.

• Alan D. Albright — the defining figure: Waco 2018–2025, Austin 2025–August 2026; retired from the bench and joined A&O Shearman on September 1, 2026. Historically the nation's most active patent judge, now fifth or lower nationally.
• Walter David Counts III — Midland-Odessa; former patent litigator; adopted an Albright-style patent standing order in 2022, overtook Albright's volume in mid-2024, and drew 337 patent cases in 2025 (up from 108 in 2024) per Lex Machina's 2026 report; RPX found him the nation's second-most-active patent judge in Q1 2025 (6% share) and noted he had, as of that time, granted no contested transfer motions or contested IPR stays — a data point that is now dated and should be re-verified.
• Christopher R. Wolfe — confirmed to the Waco bench in April 2026; received roughly 30 patent cases reassigned from Albright in May 2026 and set one for trial in July 2026. As of June 2026 he had issued no patent standing order, so his transfer, stay and Markman practices remain unsettled.
• Derek Gilliland — magistrate judge in Waco, former patent litigator with over 20 years in private practice; has handled hundreds of patent matters and remains a constant in Waco irrespective of the district judge.

Caveats: The tracked case list contains a single case, so no docket statistics can be inferred from it. Judge-specific transfer, stay and trial-timing figures cited above are several quarters to a few years old and should be refreshed against current Lex Machina, RPX or Unified Patents data before being relied on for venue strategy.