Apple to Close Stores in Eastern District of Texas to Fight Patent Trolls

It seems quite reasonable for apple to avoid the renegade court. The court is known to intentionally violate the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure to the benefit of patent holders.[1] You must seek permission from the renegade judge in order to file Summary Judgement. &quot;A party may move for summary judgment&quot; They may not move for summary judgement, because the judge denies this in this court. &quot;The court should state on the record the reasons for granting or denying the motion.&quot; The court does not, because the judge will deny permission to file the motion that would have them explain why they are denying a summary judgement motion. I consider their willful breaking of the civil rules &quot;prejudicial to the effective and expeditious administration of the business of the courts&quot;. That is to say, I consider it judicial misconduct. The court is corrupt and broken by patent greed. Apple is right to avoid this den of misconduct.<p><a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.txed.uscourts.gov&#x2F;cgi-bin&#x2F;view_document.cgi?document=22071" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.txed.uscourts.gov&#x2F;cgi-bin&#x2F;view_document.cgi?docum...</a> <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.eff.org&#x2F;deeplinks&#x2F;2014&#x2F;07&#x2F;why-do-patent-trolls-go-texas-its-not-bbq" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.eff.org&#x2F;deeplinks&#x2F;2014&#x2F;07&#x2F;why-do-patent-trolls-g...</a>

Here&#x27;s something I don&#x27;t quite understand, and where some of this feels a little hypocritical: Apple, the most valuable company in the world, could be working to reform patent law in order to make this a non-issue. Everyone talks about US politics as pay-to-play, it should be possible for Apple, Google, MS, Amazon, etc., to lobby for Software Patents, for example, to be reclassified as &quot;math&quot; and therefor not patentable. If they&#x27;re actively doing that, then I&#x27;m not aware of it. If US policy can be bought and sold as we are led to believe (maybe this is actually a false premise) then you&#x27;d think the most valuable companies in the world would be able to change it.<p>What this implies to me, is that they want the existing patent system to work in their favor, i.e. to protect their monopolies against new competitors, but they don&#x27;t want to deal with the downside of the patent troll abuse.<p>Don&#x27;t get me wrong, I&#x27;m aware of the documented corruption of the court in Texas, and I think it&#x27;s abhorrent, along with all the trolls, but this feels like a situation where Apple wants it&#x27;s cake and to eat it too. Shouldn&#x27;t we just do away with software patents all together and instead rely on copyright law?

I grew up in Plano; the Willow Bend location was the &quot;main&quot; one for my area.<p>I think this will sting. On a map it looks like the new location is trivially close-by, but the Galleria is in &quot;Dallas proper&quot;, as opposed to the other locations which were deep in suburbia. In other words you have to brave Dallas traffic across the urban sprawl to get to it. It&#x27;s not a mall people in the suburbs go to to just hang out; it&#x27;s an outing. On top of that, Plano and Frisco are both relatively wealthy areas with lots of people who really really like their Apple devices.<p>Hopefully this is a wake-up call.

Good, I hope this draws the attention of voters in the district.<p>My employer (very large) was sued twice in this court. Both times by trolls. The lawyers basically described this judge as running a ‘cottage industry’ and were unwilling to even set foot in that courtroom.<p>The patents the lawsuits were based on were insane. One of them was on any image compression for medical images which was somehow granted in 2005 (that’s another problem). There was reams of prior art but of course we settled. I was very low on the totem pole of the company but it still pissed me off to no end.

Having recently watched The Patent Scam, I wish more companies would follow suit here and exit EDOT, maybe then people would wake up and demand that these corrupt judges are removed from the bench!<p>edit: correction made per child comment.

Would such a move be enough to not be under the jurisdiction of the Eastern District? Google doesn&#x27;t have any store there yet that doesn&#x27;t stop any patent troll.

I don’t understand. Most firms that get sued in Texas for patent infringement don’t have mortar and brick shops in Eastern Texas.<p>If it was that easy to avoid infringement lawsuits in Eastern Texas, Eastern Texas would be completely deserted by tech companies, forcing the people there to change their policy.

The only thing that Apple is doing is getting out of Collin County, Texas--by closing Plano and Frisco locations. If you look here: <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.txed.uscourts.gov&#x2F;?q=court-locator" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.txed.uscourts.gov&#x2F;?q=court-locator</a> you&#x27;ll see that Collin County is in Eastern District of Texas.<p>So technically speaking, moving out of Plano and Frisco and moving to Dallas County will solve their patent troll issue.

I couldn&#x27;t figure out if the first part of the title had anything to do with the latter part of the title. Is Apple closing down its stores because of the recent ruling or was that completely unrelated to why Apple is closing down those stores?

What&#x27;s the incentive for Eastern District to be so conducive to patent trolls? Is it otherwise too small to support the judges and staff?

Nice now the judges and their sons who got bug fat checks have to face the truth finally: that they might have all the money but they still live in Eastern District of Texas that won&#x27;t have an Apple store for them to spend their cash on.

Apple are quite infamous as patent aggressors themselves, attacking others even on completely trivial issues that have prior art, so they don&#x27;t look like a good fit for anti-patent troll hero.

I thought you could file in that district if you just proved there was a customer there who bought something, even online.

The Plano store was the first one in Texas and 3rd one overall.

A powerful move would be for Apple to continue renting the space, but close the store and place posters in the windows explaining exactly why they&#x27;ve left, and why things needs to change. Might light a fire under local politicians.

Well, the eastern district of texas gets their just desserts for making it so easy for patent trolls to file there... GG.

This idiotic court must hate money, because I now have absolutely no reason to visit Frisco or spend money there lol.

I suspect this has more to do with the foot traffic at these two locations.

I suspect this won&#x27;t actually prevent lawsuits in the Eastern district.<p>With internet shopping and the new store just across the district line, lawyers should be able to argue that Apple is indeed doing business in the region. It will just waste a bit of lawyer time.<p>It almost feels like Apple is punishing the region for it&#x27;s patent troll supporting ways.

This looks like some heavy spin. The only reason why those stores were there was to put a positive spin on Apple in the minds of potential jurors. Same as the Samsung ice rink. The stores don&#x27;t have a purpose now that reforms have been put in place to inhibit shopping for favorable courts.

looks like Apple is shopping around.<p>I guess we are going to see more cases landing on the desk of Judge Lucy Koh in the Northern District. Koh is obviously known for her landmark decisions in Apple vs Samsung and other cases that overtly favored Apple. Samsung, for instance, despite having won a ITC case and a SCOTUS decision on limiting damage on design infringement, saw their ITC victory reversed&#x2F;pardoned by Obama and Apple&#x27;s hometown jury rewarding almost everything Apple had asked for.<p>Legal observers see it&#x27;s no coincidence that the FTC filed their on-going antitrust case against Qualcomm in Koh&#x27;s court, in Apple&#x27;s front yard.

The rich irony of a company that patented round corners taking the high moral ground against patent &quot;trolls&quot; or whatever their called