Chicago IP Attorney & Lawyer : R. David Donoghue : Chicago IP Litigation Blog

Last week Chief Judge Holderman delivered the annual State of the Court Address, it was his first after becoming Chief Judge last summer.  According to the Chicago Daily Law Bulletin (subscription required) he explained that the Northern District was doing very well and touched on, among others, the following subjects:

• By the end of 2007, parties should be able to file complaints and pay filing fees electronically.
  
• The Northern District plans to update its website later this year.  To that end, anyone with an e-filing account should expect a letter from Judge Holderman this fall soliciting suggestions to improve the website -- www.ilnd.uscourts.gov.
  
• The Northern District's filings were down slightly from 2005 (7,606 cases filed in 2006 compared to 7,805 in 2005).  But if student loan and mortgage foreclosure actions are removed, filings jumped 17% from 2005 to 2006.
  
• The Northern District is the seventh fastest district court based upon the time from filing to disposition of civil cases -- 6.5 months.
  
• The Northern District has instituted criminal background checks of prospective jurors, after three jurors in former Governor Ryan's 2006 criminal trial failed to disclose their criminal records or arrests during the jury selection process.

You can also read the Northern District's summary of the speech here.

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According to yesterday's Chicago Daily Law Bulletin -- Trial Courts May Take on Patent Cases (subscription required, but a free, 15-day trial is available) -- the Northern District of Illinois judges are split on the value of  a proposed pilot program.  The program would provide judges who volunteer to take patent cases with extra training and the assistance of specialized law clerks.  Cases would continue to be randomly assigned.  But after a patent case was randomly assigned, if the assigned judge rejected the case it would be reassigned to a judge participating in the patent program.

Chief Judge Holderman is a proponent of the pilot program.  Chief Judge Holderman explained that the system would benefit the patent bar and that is not new to the federal courts because senior judges already have the option of rejecting cases, which are then reassigned.   You can read more about Chief Judge Holderman's views on patent litigation in the district courts in an article he recently authored with his law clerk, Halley B. Guren, advocating, among other things, providing district judges with specialized patent training and reassigning patent cases to those judges -- "The Patent Litigation Predicament in the United States."*

Judge Kocoras, on the other hand, is "not crazy about" the program, believing that district judges are generalists who "should all take the luck of the draw."  He sees the patent pilot program opening the door to other areas of specialization among Article III judges.

Judge Moran likes the program and says he would volunteer for it.  Although, he notes that allowing "judges over 50 [to] handle computer software issues may be a violation of due process."

* The link is to a draft of the article which is in the process of being finalized for publication in the University of Illinois's Journal of Law, Technology & Policy.

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Following up on my post yesterday, The Chicago Daily Law Bulletin has published this story regarding today's Supreme Court argument in KSR International Co. v. Teleflex Inc.  The argument centered around whether the Federal Circuit's obviousness test should be revised (more on the KSR case from Patently-O here and here).  Of course, Justices often play devil's advocate in oral arguments, so it is dangerous to presume outcomes based upon oral argument, but it looks like it was good legal theater. 

Here are a few of the most interesting comments as reported in the Chicago Daily Law Bulletin piece:

Justice Scalia "derided the test as 'gobbledygook.'''

Chief Justice Roberts:  called the current test "a confusing 'layer of Federal Circuit jargon [that is] worse than meaningless.'''

Just Souter wondered whether overturning the current obviousness test would generate a flood of law suits.

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