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Catching up - Saturday morning roundup on events around the district (SMU seminar, false marking case activity, etc.)

By Michael C. Smith

I am catching up at the office this morningafter spending the first four day of last week in trial in a patent case in Judge Davis' court, followed by Thursday evening and Friday at the outstanding SMU symposium on the Eastern District's patent docket. 

But before I start on that, I wanted to explain the two attached pcitures.  This morning when I got to the Hub (which you can see on the left of the picture) I saw they were poured the stamped concrete for the new bandstand in Telegraph Park at the end of our block, which is right in front of the old courthouse.  Visitors to Marshall will remember this as the overgrown downtown park with a deteriorated mural on the wall, but it's being rebuilt as a bandstand for the many downtown events we have going on.  The name comes from its claim to fame as the location of the first telegraph in Texas in the 1850's, I think it was.  It's great to see such a beautiful little park going up on the corner - and reminds me of my grandmother, who when I was growing up clipped poodles on the building that was exactly where the bandstand is going up now.

SMU Eastern District Patent Litigation seminar

For those that missed it, you missed an outstanding set of panels on the patent docket, including a lunch presentation by Fifth Circuit Judge Patrick Higginbotham on venue, trial skills, and excoriating courts that don't set cases for trial (I didn't know there were such courts until I got a docket control order in a case in another district yesterday setting a case for ... mediation a year from now, with trial to be set as some undetermined point in the future).  I thoroughly enjoyed my panel on Eastern District jurors and the following panel on the district by Otis Carroll, Sam Baxter and Mike Jones, but the highlight of the day was really Professor Nguyen moderating a panel consisting of Chief Judge Folsom and district judges Leonard Davis and T. John Ward along with McKool Smith partner Mike McKool.  The most memorable moment was when the panel was discussing Judge Ward's upcoming retirement and Judge Davis referred to him as the "heartthrob" of the Eastern District's patent docket.  Judge Ward got visibly agitated over that, and Judge Davis had to reassure him that "I'm not saying you're my heartthrob."  There was also a panel on the effect of patent litigation on innovation which consisted my four panelists trying to gang up on Michael Shore, which is always entertainment at its finest.  And very illuminating.

Saturday...

But now I'm back in the office after dropping our 11 year old off for a Scout campout to catch up on some e-mails, monitor others, post on a few interesting cases that came out this past week (the most notable in the false marking cases), and study all the things that went on at the eleven hearings in Marshall and Tyler that my partners covered this past week while I was in trial.

Oh, and here's a picture from week before last of our two eight year olds taken from my desk.  They were sticking their heads out of the hatches from their upstairs room to ask me questions about their homework.  You can see the hinges for the third hatch to the right - but Grayson didn't have any questions when this was taken.

 

Full post as published by Eastern District of Texas Federal Court Practice on February 19, 2011 (boomark / email).