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2009 VSB Annual Meeting Events
and CLE.
We will have our annual IP section dinner on Thursday, June 18,
2009, at the Hilton at Virginia Beach. We will have a CLE on
Friday morning at 9 a.m. Our topic this year will be In re Bilski. See
Upcoming Events for more information.
Special Notice
Regarding Potential Patent Rules and Pretrial Order for the
Eastern District of Virginia:
Over the past several years,
many U.S. district courts have adopted some form of local patent rules
to provide judges and parties with a roadmap for handling patent
cases. (See
http://www.nyipla.org/public/PatentLocalRules.doc for a slightly
out-of-date list of U.S. district courts that have adopted some form
of local patent rules.)
There are no local rules for
patent cases in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of
Virginia (the "EDVA"). Indeed, the manner in which judges in the EDVA
handle patent cases vary widely from district to district and judge to
judge.
Believing that the EDVA would
benefit from the adoption of some local rules for patent cases,
several members of this VSB IP Section (the “Section”) contacted Chief
Judge James C. Spencer to gauge the judges' willingness to consider a
proposal for some sort of local patent rules and to clarify the
procedure for having such a proposal considered by the Court.
Chief Judge Spencer expressed
a willingness to consider local patent rules and described the
procedure for getting such proposed local rules considered, which
involves submitting them to a Local Rules subcommittee of judges for
consideration over the summer so that they can be vetted and presented
at the Court's annual conference in the Fall. Thus, he suggested that
any proposal be submitted by late May or early June. By way of
further guidance and advice, Chief Judge Spencer suggested that the
proposed rules not be too long or intricate, and that they afford the
judges substantial discretion in implementing the proposed rules or
procedures in their own cases.
With this guidance and
timeline in mind, a small working group (involving Dabney Carr, Maya
Eckstein, Dave Finkelson, Dana McDaniel, Chip Molster, Steve Noona,
Bob Barrett and Robert Angle) worked to craft a proposal that balances
the various competing factors and interests in EDVA patent litigation,
promotes consistency amongst the divisions, and saves the parties
involved time and money. Attached is a draft proposed Local Rule and
model Pretrial Order.
Without explaining all of the
back-and-forth that went into them, the proposed Local Rule and model
Pretrial Order are drawn from practices and procedures already used by
some of the judges in the EDVA, require parties to produce relevant
disclosures and encourage resolution of claim terms early in the case
to ameliorate the problem of late claim construction overlapping with
expert witness disclosures, and leave much of the implementation to
the discretion of the individual judges (which was deemed necessary to
have any chance of adoption by the Court as a whole).
The draft proposal has been
reviewed with Chief Judge Spencer and a few other EDVA judges, all of
whom have been generally favorable to the proposal. Before making a
formal presentation of the proposed Local Rule and model Pretrial
Order to the Court, however, the drafters of the proposed Local Rule
and model Pretrial Order are seeking the review and support of this
Section and other IP-related organizations in the state.
Accordingly, please review
the attached draft Local Rule and model Pretrial Order and provide
any questions or feedback you may have to Bob Barrett at
rbarrett@hunton.com by May
15. |