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.

The content of this article is intended to provide a general guide to the subject matter. Specialist advice should be sought about your specific circumstances.