You’ve seen the signs. It usually takes place as your entering into a county, small town, and even a few medium sized cities. Just as you drive up, you look to see what the highway sign says and there you see it, “Home of…” and thereafter follows the name of the local man or woman who has made some type of impact to bring recognition to their hometown.
I remember one of the most recent examples I’ve seen while passing through New Mexico. There it was, “Home of Brian Urlacher.” Of course, like any red blooded American I recognized the name of the Chicago Bears bone crushing linebacker.
When thinking about the type of recognition a couple of local boys are getting in the towns of Marshall, Texarkana, and Tyler I’m starting to wonder if their names deserve being put on a highway sign. I can see it now, “Home of T. John Ward Jr.” What, you don’t recognize the name?
Let me elaborate. For those who have not heard, there is a trend taking place in the court rooms of these 3 East Texas towns that has waves of lawyers and legal representatives from all parts of the United States flooding in, and they are getting beat out by the local guy.
This trend is the ever growing patent infringement litigation cases. Due to favorable decisions for plaintiffs of patent infringement cases, anyone looking to win their case makes sure it happens in East Texas.
And this includes patent trolls, those appropriately labeled businesses that only look to buy patents from other businesses in order to use them for these types of infringement cases. And when it comes to winning these cases, the local names are getting game. One key ingredient to winning cases in these counties is to have a local lawyer who knows the jury and what they want to hear.
With big names companies entering in these cases you would expect to hear big name lawyers, but rather, the names you hear are from the graduating class of ’72 of the local high school, and that’s something to hang your hat on.