This morning, the Eastern District of Virginia held a hearing on SmithKline’s motion for a preliminary injunction against the PTO to prevent the new continuation rules from becoming effective tomorrow, November 1st — click here for the Blog’s coverage of the case this morning.  Gene Quinn and John White of the PLI Patent Practice Center Blog, who attended the hearing, are reporting that the Court preliminarily enjoined the PTO from making the new continuation rules effective.  Of course, the injunction is only preliminary so there is no way to tell what the ultimate result will be.  But everyone that was busy trying to file one last continuation today and worried about whether the PTO’s e-filing system would crash under the weight of all of the last minute filings, can put down their pens and rest easy.  The deadline may still come, but it is no longer today.