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Fixing Forum Selling, Brian L. Frye, Christopher J. Ryan Jr.
Fixing Forum Selling, Brian L. Frye, Christopher J. Ryan Jr.
Law Faculty Scholarly Articles
"Forum selling” is jurisdictional competition intended to attract litigants. While consensual forum selling may be beneficial, non-consensual forum selling is harmful because it encourages jurisdictions to adopt an inefficient pro-plaintiff bias. In the last 20 years, the Eastern District of Texas has adopted an aggressive and remarkably successful policy of non-consensual forum selling in patent infringement actions. In 2016, 44% of all patent infringement actions were filed in the Eastern District of Texas, and 93% of them were filed by patent assertion entities or “patent trolls.”
In December 2016, the Supreme Court granted certiorari in TC Heartland v. Kraft, …