This is from weblog by MICHAEL C. SMITH attorney firm( SIEBMAN,REYNOLDS,BURG,PHILLIPS) that contracted by DUANE MORRIS.

Three new wrinkles in the patent case orders entered by Judge T. John Ward, who handles 60% of the Marshall and 10% of the Texarkana dockets. They are reflected in a new Appendix C to his scheduling orders (the former Appendix C was the patent rules themselves, which no longer need to be attached since they are in the local rules) which amends the Eastern District Patent Rules. A copy of the new language is attached here.

I. Notice requirements

II. Infringement and Invalidity Contentions for Software

III. Claim Construction Deadlines

The third and final change relates to the scheduling of claims construction deadlines. Under the ND Cal and ED Tex patent rules, the scheduling order begins the dates running on PICS and the claims construction deadlines, with the Markman hearing itself wandering around somewhere at the end looking for a place on the judge's calendar. And due to the large number of patent filings, there tended to be about a three month delay following claims construction briefing before the judge could schedule a hearing, and then trial following quickly (some would argue too quickly) thereafter. Coincidentally, however, there was also about a three month delay between the filing of an answer and the scheduling conference. The reason was that since the court typically scheduled cases for trial about 12 months after the scheduling conference, but a trial setting usually wasn't available till about 18-20 months months after the answer, there was inevitably a delay of 3-5 months in having a scheduling conference. Accordingly, Judge Ward modified the patent rules to set the claims construction dates to begin not at a date after the PICS were complete - as the rules now require - but at 140 days (twenty weeks) before the date set for the claims construction hearing. Thus with PICS unchained from Markman and the trial setting, scheduling conferences can be set earlier (at 18 months before trial), thus giving the parties the use of what had previously been dead time before the scheduling conference in which to prepare their cases, without delaying the trial setting. Clients everywhere should soon notice the difference, as the heretofore slow, Indian Summer-like months following the defendants' answer in patent cases disappears, replaced with far more time to argue over whether each others' PICs are adequate.

The rule also modified the deadline for the 4-3 joint prehearing statement. Previously it was 60 days after 4-1. Now it is 30 days after 4-2, which has the net effect of moving it up 10 (ten) days.

If anyone else has any other observations on the new order, please feel free to comment. As Judge Ward observes, this order only applies to the one case it has been entered in, i.e. it is not a standing order, and it will be entirely up to the Court whether to apply it in other cases (although it would not be surprisingly if the Court concluded that it were proper in other cases as well). No word as of this writing whether these changes will be included in the Eastern District's local patent rules, but as chair of the local rules committee, I can say that they certainly will be considered. Many of the district's rules have started out as good practices by individual judges, and this rule certainly falls into that category.