US District Judge Leonard Davis said this week he's going to leave the bench to join Fish & Richardson, a large law firm focused on intellectual property.

Davis, who has presided in the Eastern District of Texas since 2002, has one of the most active patent dockets in the nation and has presided over some of the biggest technology lawsuits of the past decade. Corporate Counsel magazine reported this week that he has handled more than 1,700 individual IP cases as a judge. Before becoming a judge, he worked for 23 years in private practice.

Statistics for 2013 showed 263 new patent cases being assigned to Davis, about one-sixth of the 1,700 patent cases that were filed in the district, the busiest in the nation. Only four other judges, three in Delaware and one in East Texas, had more patent cases assigned to them.

It was Davis and another former East Texas judge, T. John Ward III, who oversaw the Eastern District as it became a hotspot for patent lawsuits—especially Tyler, where Davis' courtroom is, and Marshall, where Ward sat.

Some of the headline-grabbing tech cases Davis oversaw included i4i v. Microsoft, which resulted in a $290 million verdict against Microsoft, upheld on appeal; VirnetX v. Apple, which led to a $368 million verdict that was later overturned; and the Eolas case, where a patent-holder seeking a royalty on the entire "interactive web" was defeated in a trial in which Web inventor Tim Berners-Lee testified for the defense.

In the early days, Eastern District courts were attractive because patent cases moved extremely quickly. As more cases got filed, it slowed down, but it stayed attractive because of the expertise of the judges and because cases were more likely to pass the summary judgment stage and get to a jury.

Bench to bar

Davis says he started getting offers from a variety of firms when he announced last year he was planning to retire in May 2015, but chose Fish & Richardson because "they’re as ethical and professional as they come," he told the WSJ Law Blog.

"Judge Davis is a perfect match for Fish because we are involved in more patent litigation than any other law firm in the country and Judge Davis manages one of the nation’s busiest patent dockets," said Ann Cathcart Chaplin, the law firm's head of litigation.

In a rare interview last year, published by FTI Journal, Davis addressed the concern that courts in his district have been seen as too pro-plaintiff. People "underestimate jurors and assume they are uneducated," he said, but his post-trial discussions with jurors show they work hard to get it right. He continued:

Initially, we were seen that way because, early on, plaintiffs had some remarkable success. But that perception is changing. I ran some statistics the other day, and for 2013, we took 15 patent cases to a jury, and 11 of those had a defense verdict. I think the defense bar is doing a much better job of trying cases now than in the past. A decade ago, plaintiffs would employ trial lawyers, and the defense would employ patent lawyers. Today, the most successful defendants are using trial lawyers as well, with excellent patent lawyers backing them up. And the national firms are relying on and using local counsel much more effectively.

Davis will be the third federal judge in the Eastern District to leave the bench for private patent practice in recent years. Former Judge T. John Ward, the grandfather of the Eastern District patent practice, was a judge from 1999 until 2011 before leaving for private practice. A third federal judge, Chard Everingham, is now a partner in Akin & Gump's Longview office. Everingham was a US magistrate judge in Marshall, where he often oversaw full patent trials due to the court's heavy load and was Ward's permanent law clerk for seven years before that.

Both Davis and Ward also have sons who are attorneys with patent-focused legal practices. T. John "Johnny" Ward Jr. founded the small firm of Ward & Smith, which his father joined. Bo Davis, Judge Davis' son, is a solo practitioner in Longview.

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