Others, like Jerry Cargill, who runs a wholesale beverage distributing company in Dallas and has a family farm outside Marshall, said they hoped that increased tourism would play a bigger role in Marshall’s comeback.

In the last three years, Mr. Cargill has bought nine buildings downtown, as well as a $500,000 stake in the historic Hotel Marshall. The City of Marshall put in $1 million and others raised $527,000 to restore the building to its original Italian Renaissance design.

“I didn’t even hear about the rocket docket until a year ago,” Mr. Cargill said. “By then, we were well into the various projects.”

This fall, a tourism marketing firm is coming to town to create a branding plan and to offer ideas to alter Marshall’s infrastructure for tourism. “It’s a unique community,” Mr. Cargill said. “It just needs some marketing.”

Marshall’s patent docket may not be able to sustain its current pace of growth. Its reputation for speed is starting to attract so many cases that a certain sluggishness may be setting in. Four years ago, lawsuits took less than two years to go to trial. Now the average time between when a suit is filed and when it goes to court is more than 27 months.

There is legislative movement afoot as well. This spring, two senators, Patrick J. Leahy, Democrat of Vermont, and Orrin G. Hatch, Republican of Utah, introduced a patent reform bill. Among its many provisions is one to limit damages in patent lawsuits and another to require a more substantial connection between a business and the court where it brings a patent lawsuit.

WE think the bill will restore more balance in the patent system and remove incentives for plaintiffs to run to one jurisdiction and try to hit the jackpot,” said Mark W. Isakowitz, a lobbyist with the Coalition for Patent Fairness, which advocates patent reform on behalf of corporations. Any reform would likely happen next year at the earliest, lawyers say.