The plaintiff-friendly East Texas district has long been patent trolls’ favorite place to file lawsuits, but one was so egregious that even their favorite judge has not only shut it down, but awarded costs against them.
Ars Technica’s Joe Mullin reports that US District Judge Rodney Gilstrap, “who hears more patent cases that any other federal judge,” ordered that eDekka’s behavior was exceptionally bad and that the it should pay the legal fees of the companies it sued.
…until this order was issued, Gilstrap had never before ordered any patent plaintiff to pay up for filing massive numbers of lawsuits, even after it became the easier to win such awards after the Octane Fitness case.
These changes in the patent trolling landscape made the court’s friendliness to them seem more explicit. Perhaps it just took a while to sink in?