Law360 recently called on Botkin Chiarello Calaf partner Leah Bhimani Buratti for her insights on why the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Texas is no longer the country’s most popular patent venue.

In the article (subscription required), Leah discusses developments in the Western District of Texas that have led to it no longer holding the top spot for new patent cases filed. Leah was called by Law360 after co-authoring a Law360 commentary last year about jury verdicts in patent cases in the Western District of Texas.

The rush to file in Waco subsided in 2023 following a random assignment order entered the prior year, which required that patent cases filed in the Waco Division be assigned randomly among what is now a group of 11 judges. Judge Albright previously received all the district’s newly filed patent cases.

“The random assignment order was designed to do this,” Leah explained in the article. "It has had the impact that I think everybody expected. . . .”

Based on statistics from Lex Machina, the Eastern District tallied 627 new patent filings in 2023, with the Western District logging 519 new cases, making them the top two patent districts in the nation. In 2022, the Western District patent caseload was 879 cases compared to 471 in the Eastern District.

Despite the numerical downswing, Leah told Law360 that the patent case workloads in the Western District and Judge Albright’s court are likely to stay busy. She noted the large number of existing cases on the judge’s docket, and that Judge Albright will continue to receive related filings.

“He had such a heavy load at the outset that those [cases] have been plenty to keep him very busy, even since the random assignment order,” Leah told the publication.