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The Texas Supreme Court heard arguments last week in a dispute between ConocoPhillips and Noble Energy. Although the case ostensibly involves liability for a $63 million oil field cleanup, many energy companies are concerned about its potential effect on the market for energy assets traded in bankruptcy. Thomas C. Wright argued for Noble, while Omar Alaniz and Richard Mithoff represent ConocoPhillips.

There were 33 percent fewer patent infringement lawsuits filed in Texas in 2016 than there were the year before. Even so, Texas’ Eastern District has more than three times as many new patent cases lodged in its federal courts than any other jurisdiction in the U.S. The Northern District also saw its patent docket shrink. Legal experts explain the trend to The Texas Lawbook give their intellectual property predictions for 2017.

Houston-based Noble Energy said Monday that it will acquire all the outstanding stock of Clayton Williams Energy, a Midland-based independent E&P company, in a deal that is anticipated to create the industry’s second largest acreage position in the Permian’s Southern Delaware Basin.

The Woodlands-based Anadarko Petroleum Corp. is pulling out of the Eagle Ford Shale by selling its $2.3 billion assets there to Blackstone Group and Sanchez Energy Corp., the companies said Thursday, and the companies needed 74 lawyers from five law firms to help them do it.