W.D. Texas

Court Profile: U.S. District Court for the Western District of Texas

Court overview. The U.S. District Court for the Western District of Texas (W.D. Tex.) sits in the Fifth Circuit and operates divisions in Austin, Waco, San Antonio, Midland-Odessa, El Paso, and elsewhere. It is the second-busiest patent forum in the country: Lex Machina's 2026 Patent Litigation Report counted 531 patent filings in 2025 (11.5% of all U.S. patent suits), behind only the Eastern District of Texas (1,245 filings, 25.7%) and just ahead of Delaware. That position is a legacy of Judge Alan D. Albright, whose Waco courtroom drew roughly one in four new patent cases nationally at its 2021 peak — filings rose from ~90 in 2018 to 3,863 in 2020 — before a July 2022 district-wide order randomly redistributed Waco patent filings across the bench.

Patent docket reputation. W.D. Tex. earned its "rocket docket" label largely through Albright's trial-focused case management; Docket Navigator data cited in a 2022 journal analysis put average time-to-trial before him at ~730 days (about two years) from 2019–2022. Published commentary (IPWatchdog, RPX, Bloomberg Law) describes the court as plaintiff-friendly during that era: Albright was known for restrictive transfer posture (drawing repeated Federal Circuit mandamus reversals), rarely staying cases pending IPR, holding early Markman hearings, preferring jury trials over summary judgment, and deferring § 101 eligibility challenges until after claim construction. Since the 2022 reassignment order, however, filings have dispersed across the district and the docket has moderated.

Local rules and procedures. W.D. Tex. has no district-wide local patent rules; practice is governed by judge-specific standing orders. Albright's "Order Governing Proceedings" — and his June 2021 amendments on venue — set presumptive limits on venue discovery (5 interrogatories, 10 requests for production, 10 deposition hours), required transfer-motion status reports at least six weeks before Markman, and capped claim construction at roughly ten disputed terms with early hearings. Judge David Counts of Midland-Odessa adopted a near-identical patent standing order a week after the 2022 reassignment order, restoring the "file in a single-judge division and know your judge" dynamic that plaintiffs previously used in Waco.

Notable cases and trends. The tracked case here, HyperQuery LLC v. Canva US, Inc. (W.D. Tex. No. 7:25-cv-00055, refiled as 7:25-cv-00438), is assigned to Judge Counts with Magistrate Judge Derek Gilliland; the original action was voluntarily dismissed without prejudice in September 2025, and in August 2026 the court denied Canva's sanctions bid against plaintiff's counsel, finding HyperQuery's infringement theory not "exceptionally meritless." More broadly, Albright's final months on the bench produced headline rulings including a January 2026 anti-suit injunction in Onesta IP v. BMW — the first U.S. case to enjoin German litigation over the CJEU's BSH ruling on extraterritorial infringement. Albright departed the bench at the end of August 2026, leaving a large backlog (446 undecided motions as of September 2025) that his Austin colleagues are absorbing.

Judges. The district's most prominent patent judges have been Alan D. Albright (2018–2026, now an IP partner at A&O Shearman), a former Bracewell patent litigator who handled 158 W.D. Tex. patent cases in 2025; and David Counts (Midland-Odessa), also a former patent litigator, who took 337 patent cases in 2025 — the district's busiest — and presides over the tracked HyperQuery matter. Other judges with notable patent roles include Robert Pitman (Austin), senior judge David Ezra, newly confirmed Austin judge Andrew Davis, and Chief Judge Alia Moses. Magistrate Judge Derek Gilliland (Waco) is the referring magistrate in the HyperQuery case.