If you're invested enough in Delaware litigation to be reading this blog, you will be aware that Judge Stark is slated to leave us soon, and the district has set forth some guidance on what will happen to his cases when he departs. The Court has been reassigning Judge Stark's cases in batches since the beginning of February, and I have arbitrarily decided (because its Friday) that today we have enough data to do a quick rundown of where the cases are going.
As of today, the Court has transferred a mere 26 of Judge Stark's patent cases (counting related cases as a single case),whichhave been distributed as follows:
- 7 - Judge Noreika
- 4 - Judge Andrews
- 3 - Judge Connolly
- 3 - Judge Kennelly of the Northern District of Illinois, a New Visiting Judge!
- 2 - Senior Judge Bataillon of the District of Nebraska, who previously served as a visiting judge when Judges Sleet and Robinson retired
- 2 - Judge Wolson of the Eastern District of Pennsylvania, who also previously served as a visiting judge in Delaware
- 1 - Judge Goldberg of the Eastern District of Pennsylvania, who has also served as a visiting judge in the past
- 1 - Judge Jordan of the Third Circuit, who previously served as a district court judge in Delaware and has sat by designation in the district several times in recent years
The Court had previously stated that cases would be reassigned to our other Delaware Article III judges only in "rare instances" so we can probably expect them to stop taking the bulk of the load fairly shortly. It'll be interesting to see some new visiting judges this year -- and please sign up to pro-order your set of visiting judge trading cards -- sure to be a collectors item (not a real thing).!
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