Patent lawsuit filings down 33% year-over-year in Q3 2015, driven by drop in East Texas troll cases
New patent lawsuits down, driven by drop in East Texas “troll” cases — At this point, filing numbers are tied to just a few “non-practicing entities.”
Context & Ripple Effects
The Q3 drop is a concentration story more than a reform story: a July study found 90% of tech patent suits in the first half of 2015 were filed by trolls, so when a handful of non-practicing entities pull back, the national numbers move with them. Days before this report, an East Texas judge dismissed 168 cases from eDekka, 2014's most prolific filer, removing one of those volume drivers outright.
First-order effects
- Non-practicing entities that depended on high-volume East Texas filing — eDekka foremost — lose their preferred venue's output, and defense-side legal spend on troll cases falls with it.
- Aggregate filing statistics now swing on the behavior of a few NPEs rather than broad industry litigation activity.
Second-order effects
- With Eastern District of Texas under scrutiny, filing activity migrates to friendlier districts — a pattern that later shows up in [[a:958716|West Texas becoming a patent-litigation hotspot after a former patent litigator took the bench]] in 2018.
- Defendants gain leverage to challenge venue and case-management practices, pressuring judges in popular districts to police docket volume.
Third-order effects
- If filings stay tied to a few repeat players, structural fixes — judicial discipline like the eDekka dismissal and eventual Supreme Court limits on venue shopping, which cut East Texas filings 60%+ in the 90 days after the ruling — matter more than incremental tort-reform proposals.
- Litigation geography becomes a moving target: pressure on one district simply relocates the docket, keeping the troll business model intact elsewhere.
The trend: Patent litigation volume is increasingly determined by where a small set of non-practicing entities can file, making venue rules and individual judges the real levers over lawsuit counts.