Judges Coar, Gettleman, Kennelly and Lefkow are continuing their joint trial call (started in 2007, click here for the Blog’s post about it).*  Each judge is contributing cases to the call, apparently at the judge’s discretion.  The cases in the call will be tried in order by one of the five judges, although not necessarily the judge originally assigned the case.  Each trial is expected to last no longer than five days and the attorneys and parties for a case on the call are expected to be ready for trial, including producing witnesses, on 48 hours notice.  So far, I do not believe any IP cases have been put on the joint call.  And I suspect that the five day trial limit will remove at least the typical patent case from the joint call, although plenty of trade secret, trademark and copyright cases could end up on it. 

*  Judge Bucklo was a part of the joint call last year, but is not listed this year.