During the oral argument in Octane Fitness, Justice Alito asked an interesting question about the frequency at which district court judges hear patent cases. In response to a comment from Mr. Telscher that “I do think district court judges see a lot of patent litigation,” Justice Alito asked:
Is that really true? There’s nearly 700 district judges in the country. If we had a statistic about the average number of patent cases that a district judge hears and receives on, let’s say, a 5 year period, what would it be?
Oral Argument Transcript at 14 (full transcript available here).
The question was posed in such a way as to imply that patent cases were a rare occurrence for most district court judges, and since neither counsel nor research into secondary sources provided a ready answer, we pulled data from Lex Machina to seek some insight into this issue.
