It's a US district court, as in Federal court, so no, you can't just choose not to show up if you are filed against. Unless, of course, you don't want to do business in the US, or have any assets here.

Can another tactic be employed in this battle against patent trolls?...

Public education programs targeted to residents of East Texas. Documentaries, billboards, sophisticated advertising campaigns, unsophisticated advertising campaigns on 7-11 cups, etc. Whatever communicates to the residents.

i.e. don't say "you hillbillies are stupid pawns", but use a marketing campaign that speaks to the residents. For example "people claiming to hold patents are destroying freedom -- they're like people trying to take away all your gun rights".

Whatever works to enlighten.

This tactic is not intended to be a silver bullet, but part of a no holds barred effort to battle this ridiculous patent nonsense. Weaken troll's ability to exploit the Eastern District of Texas (while more directed efforts to solve this problem continue).

Won't work, most people have no concept of their freedoms and how they are threatened. They typically don't realize the problem until the freedom is already taken from them.

To get through in an immediate way you have to educate them on how much it costs them in monetary terms. For example, often it is cited that juries give ridiculous amounts at trial because it "isn't their money". I fully believe that many think this way. But if the affected party are organizations that receive money from the public for their services in return, in the end it is their money they are giving away.

I'm reminded of the time Amazon stopped its associates program with Connecticut and Colorado. Granted, that was over taxes, but I can see how it will still cause enough of a fuss to make people look at this more closely.

Most people have no concept of software patents, until a company they know or do business with is suddenly affected. So a boycott or even a threatened boycott with Texas may get a lot of attention.

My California account was temporarily stopped as well.

It's a Federal court -- you can't avoid jurisdiction just by not doing business in TX.

My understanding is that it's the trolls that open offices in Tyler just so that they can file the suit in that district. I.e. the plaintiff is dragging the defendant into TX, and the defendant can't avoid that court.

Any court, federal or otherwise, has to have personal jurisdiction over the defendant (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personal_jurisdiction#Principle...). The rules are somewhat complex, but it should at least theoretically be possible to avoid being hauled into court in EDTX by not doing business there, blocking customers from there, etc.

It is a little bit more complicated than that. Transferring out of EDTX has been easier since the Fed Cir granted mandamus in In re TS Tech and its progeny (which was based on a 5th Cir decision, In re Volkswagen). The case law is still developing, but patent trolls are having a slightly more difficult time staying in EDTX. http://patently-useless.tumblr.com/

Yes, there's been a few reports where someone will investigate the "offices" of the patent troll and it becomes quite clear that no one is actually there. They are just renting the door for the address, more or less. I believe rental properties catering to this is a booming business in a few districts across the US.

As a counterpoint because EDTX has been used so heavily as a patent litigation court their infrastructure is uniquely tailored to handle software patent litigation. By extension the jury is also more familiar with the complexities and details of software patents.

So your choice is choosing a jury in a district that is more familiar with technology, software, and patents or choosing a jury in a district who were dumb enough not to get out of jury duty.

Based on many of the cases that have come from there, I would state that they are no more familiar with technology, software, and patents then any other district. It's just that for some reason or another they are pro-plaintiff in these cases. The articles suggests the possible cause of that lay in the judges themselves since Newegg was apparently not allowed to argue to invalidate the patents in the first place, which was stupid. A higher court agreed and reversed the decision so I fail to see how the district's supposed familiarity with such things were a benefit to anyone.