A Blog About Intellectual Property Litigation and the District of Delaware


Entries for tag: PACER

Veterans Day
Chad Madden, Unsplash

Monday is Veterans' Day, a federal holiday. Keep that in mind if you have dates calendared for Monday—they may move under FRCP 6.

Of course, if you have a hard November 11, 2024 deadline set in, for example, a scheduling order, that deadline does not move. So also be aware that CM/ECF is also scheduled to be down until 5pm on Monday:

CM/ECF 1.8.1 Update
CM/ECF WILL BE UNAVAILABLE FROM 9 A.M. ON SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 10th, . . . UNTIL 5 P.M. ON MONDAY, NOVEMBER 11th, 2024
The U.S. District Court for the District of Delaware will upgrade its CM/ECF system to version 1.8.1 starting at 9:00 AM on Sunday, November 10th 2024. Please note that CM/ECF will be unavailable, as outlined above, during the upgrade.

To the extent you have a filing due Monday, now might be a good time to discuss an extension until after the Court's 5pm deadline.

We’ll have no post on Monday, since the Court is closed and there haven’t been a lot of opinions this week - see you Tuesday!

I'm curious how the National Archive pulls a document from storage. I like to imagine that it involves a fork lift.
I'm curious how the National Archive pulls a document from storage. I like to imagine that it involves a fork lift. Elevate, Unsplash

I began practicing law just after the District Court's e-filing systems, CM/ECF and PACER, were implemented—so I didn't get a lot of experience with how attorneys used to manage federal dockets or handle federal filings before you could just instantly file or pull things.

But occasionally, when I'm researching something, I'll find a reference to a document that looks helpful but that was filed before PACER existed, and as such is not available in Lexis or Westlaw. Typically, my response is to look longingly at the citation, and then to continue searching until I find something …

When re-filing things that were pulled from PACER, the Court has said that parties should remove the old CM/ECF headers:

CORRECTING ENTRY: The redacted public version of D.I. 157 at D.I. 161 has been replaced with a version that does not contain CM/ECF headers. Counsel is reminded to remove CM/ECF headers from previously-filed documents when filing.

ESCO Group LLC v. Deere & Company, C.A. No. 20-1679-WCB (D. Del. Feb. 9, 2023).

That way, when the document is later pulled from the docket, you don't get the overlapping and unreadable headers at the top.

If you don't redact them, it can end up looking something like this:

I believe it used to be possible to remove these …

AI
Markus Winkler, Unsplash

An order on Friday reminded me of a local counsel issue that comes up from time to time here in D. Del.

Whenever a party files a motion or a brief, the docket on PACER automatically includes a due date, like so:

312 OPENING BRIEF in Support re 311 MOTION to Amend Judgment, filed by ViaTech Technologies Inc..Answering Brief/Response due date per Local Rules is 11/8/2023. (Mayo, Andrew) . . . (Entered: 10/25/2023)

ViaTech Technologies, Inc. v. Adobe Inc., C.A. No. 20-358-RGA-JLH (D. Del. Oct. 25, 2023).

The docket text is not perfectly clear, but that due date is automatically generated based on a set of rules in PACER (that are …