Would it be a specialized Art III court or any District Court?

As I conceive of it, it would be a specialized Art. III court. I think that there should be a set of Art. III district courts set aside specifically for adjudicating patent validity challenges—and nothing else. Infringement would still be handled in the local venue,* but if a validity challenge were raised in that infringement case, it would be hived off to the specialty court and the infringement case stayed until the validity issues are resolved.

The judges appointed to this specialty court should be required to have at least and undergraduate degree in a STEM field. There would be no juries for these trials, as the trials would be styled as a suit against the PTO, whose sovereign immunity is not obliged by the VII amendment to try a case to a jury. The FRCP would be amended to have special discovery provisions applicable only to these courts, to provide essentially the same degree of discovery as presently available in an IPR/PGR. Just as in IPRs/PGRs, there would be a one-year limit to the time of the proceedings, with a six-month pre-trial conference and motions period (much like the present IPR/PGR arrangement) during which time the parties would negotiate which issues are to be tried. The court’s goal would be to reduce the number of grounds of asserted invalidity to the one or two strongest grounds, and the rest simply to be left on the cutting room floor.

In other words, the whole thing would operate much like the present PTAB, but with the judicial independence afforded by Art. III structure, and thus without the potential for political interference inherent (if only latently so far) in the present IPR/PGR structure. It should not be more costly or time consuming than the current IPR/PGR regime, but with perhaps a slightly more unassailable appearance of being neutral and fair.