US District Judge Leonard Davis, presiding judge of the Eastern District of Texas, the favorite venue for patent trolls, has retired from the bench and joined the largest IP law firm in the nation:

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.

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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.

I understand the justification for IP law.

Basically, it comes down to allow rent seeking behavior to, “To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts.”

Unfortunately, rent seeking is an inherently corrupting activity, because it gives people the ability to get money for nothing.

Thus we see judges joining IP firms, and judges’ kids joining lucrative IP law firms.

It’s destroying our economy, and it needs to stop.