Originally published in V&E IP Insights E-communication, August 25, 2011
Pursuant to Pub. L. No. 111-349 (known as the "Patent Pilot
Program"), the Director of the Administrative Office of the
U.S. Courts recently selected 14 federal district courts to
participate in a 10-year pilot project designed to enhance
expertise in patent cases among U.S. district judges. Included
among these 14 jurisdictions were both the Northern District of
Texas and the Eastern District of Texas.
Under the Patent Pilot Program, willing judges in a participating
district are designated to be patent judges. Each patent case filed
in that district is initially assigned at random, according to
standard procedure. Any assigned judge who is not a patent judge,
however, may decline to accept the case. That case would then be
randomly assigned to one of the patent judges in that
district.
The Northern District of Texas has recently announced that its
participation in the program will begin in one week, on September
1, 2011. There will be only three patent judges in the entire
15-judge district: Judge Barbara M.G. Lynn, Judge David C. Godbey,
and Judge Ed Kinkeade. Special Order 3-287. All three of these judges
are in the Dallas Division. The order states in a footnote that,
"except for the designated patent judges, all district judges
in the Dallas Division have advised that they intend to decline to
accept Patent Pilot Cases for a period of at least one year, and
that, if they later decide to accept Patent Pilot Cases, they will
notify the other district judges and the bar of their
intentions."
This is not the first patent-related pilot project in which the
Dallas Division has participated. In 2007, the Dallas Division
adopted local patent rules in the form of a miscellaneous order to
control the management of patent cases. The latest version is Amended Miscellaneous Order No. 62.
What This Means for You
Any patent infringement case filed in Dallas starting next
Thursday will be assigned to Judge Lynn, Judge Godbey, or Judge
Kinkeade. Each of these judges has substantial experience with
patent cases and elected to be designated as a patent judge. In
meetings with the Dallas Bar, these judges have further expressed a
desire to manage patent cases efficiently and with relative speed
and uniformity.
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