Intellectual Property Law

Judge Leonard P. Stark: Scheduling Order (Patent Cases)

By Karen E. Keller, Andrew A. Lundgren et al.

In a case assigned to Judge Leonard P. Stark, he recently issued an Order scheduling a Rule 16 teleconference and attached a draft copy of the Rule 16 form scheduling order. This form is not yet posted to the Court's website, but will likely be his form scheduling order going forward. The order appears to combine some practices of each of his colleagues on the bench as well as former judges from this district. Here are some of the interesting sections:

- Deposition testimony is limited to a total number of hours proposed by the parties (instead of number of depositions)

- Judge Stark does not adopt a formal exchange of contention interrogatories in his order (compare to Judge Robinson's form Rule 16 order), but does state that the "Court encourages the parties to serve and respond to contentions early in the case."

- A provision that is unique to his form is paragraph 4 which applies to the case protective order. He requires that any proposed order include the following a paragraph set forth in the form order that applies to other proceedings.

- Judge Stark has a provision for the parties to provide tutorials on the technology at issue via submission of a videotape or CD of not more than 30 minutes with the ability for the opposing party to submit a short written comment on the other side's submission.

- Case dispositve motions are to be briefed according to the local rules.

A copy of his form order is attached below.

Judge Leonard P. Stark Rule 16 Scheduling Order (Patent Cases)

Full post as published by Delaware IP Law Blog on August 26, 2010 (boomark / email).