Papers/Seminar Presentations

Patent Case Management Year in Review – BCLT 2023 IP + Tech Month

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I had a lot of fun taping this Friday afternoon with Azra, Kiley & Wayne for the Berkeley Center for Law & Technology’s “IP + Tech Month” program. I don’t usually say that about anything involving 73 slides, but here I will. My Texas portion started out as a 63 page script of cases over the past year, condensed down to 15 slides, but the condensing process – as it is wont to do – hopefully made it better and more useful.

The presentation started out with a brief overview of the Supreme Court’s new case on enablement which came out the day before, then covered patent case management developments in Delaware before I went through what’s happened in Texas courts over the last year.

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Trial Procedure in Federal Court – TexasBarCLE

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Reprised my presentation on trial procedure this afternoon for TexasBarCLE’s upcoming Federal Court Practice course. This year the course is presented online only on May 12, but we recorded the presentations yesterday and today. Lots of new trial anecdotes since the last time I did it, and hopefully they’re both informative and entertaining. Slides are below the fold, and I’ll add the paper when the Bar finishes final formatting. Here’s the link to register.

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IAM Article: “EDTX judge’s new limine order takes name-calling off the table”

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My article on Chief Judge Rodney Gilstrap’s new standing order on motions in limine was published on IAM last week – it’s accessible to subscribers here. Unlike most of my writing, which is perhaps more directed towards practitioners, it is focused on what clients might want to know about the order. The principal takeaway is that it ought to save clients money, and help inform them what sorts of issues and arguments are off the table in Judge Gilstrap’s court.

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Snowmageddon Meets Advanced Civil Trial

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In New Orleans (somehow) this morning to speak on Post-Judgment Motions for the TexasBarCLE Advanced Civil Trial seminar. Since everything in Texas east of Houston is frozen (power’s out in Austin and airports are closed in Dallas and Austin) most of the speakers couldn’t make it as scheduled, so the schedule was revised and my presentation is pushed up an hour. But there are beignets and chicory coffee, they are giving me half an hour to talk on a trial procedure topic, and there’s a WW II museum just down the street so my day really couldn’t get better.

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23rd Annual Berkeley-Stanford Advanced Patent Law Institute

msmithPapers/Seminar Presentations


Up to full speed this morning in Day 1 listening to Mark Lemley update us all on developments in patent law. We’ve already covered proposed patent legislation and SEPS and new standards. PTO leadership discussion is next, and our panel (with Aaron Nathan subbing for an ill partner) is second to last this afternoon. Tomorrow we break into litigation and prosecution tracks. Great, great seminar.

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Jurisdiction and Venue: Newest Developments for Selecting, Preserving & Challenging a Court

msmithPapers/Seminar Presentations


Looking forward to our panel this afternoon. Becca and I had a great time preparing the “supplemental materials” paper below which has the cases and issues discussed, including copies of the key cases and relevant graphs and tables. And it gave us a chance to show off our picture from the EDTX bench/bar planning meeting this summer.

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Jurisdiction and Venue – Newest developments for selecting, preserving, and challenging a court

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I am looking forward to my panel with Matt Powers of Tensegrity and Sarah Guske of Baker Botts, this morning at the 23rd Annual Berkeley-Stanford Advanced Patent Law Institute in Palo Alto on the subject of the newest developments in selecting, preserving, and challenging a court. Attached below are the supplemental materials on this topic for attendees and readers that Becca Skupin and I prepared. If you have any questions, ping us at michael.smith@solidcounsel.com or becca.skupin@solidcounsel.com .
2022-APLI-Jurisdiction-and-Venue-Final

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The Federal Circuit’s 2020-2021 Patent Venue Mandamus Cases (Part 2 of a 4-Part Series)

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While I was in trial last week Texas Lawyer published the second article of a 4-part series I co-authored with Erick S. Robinson and Karl Rupp. ALM subscribers can access the article here.

Part 1 of this series identified two reasons for the large number of Federal Circuit opinions granting mandamuses reversing Western District of Texas Judge Alan D Albright’s rulings denying patent defendant motions to transfer venue. The article referenced the Federal Circuit’s well-documented tendency to add requirements to statutes, and the panel-specific nature of many Federal Circuit decisions, pinpointing that while 13 judges were eligible to sit on the mandamus panels, only four have overwhelmingly granted the petitions. But those four judges—along with Judge Taranto—sit on a disproportionate number of panels, and have designated for publication several of the opinions in their cases.

This article examines this second aspect of the 2020 – 2021 opinions in more detail, including reasons why more petitions for mandamus review of venue decisions make their way to certain judges, and especially those filed by certain types of defendants.

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