Next week's Texas Lawyer will have a good article on the current state of the Marshall Division patent docket by reporter Mary Alice Robbins, Eastern District Rocket Docket Decelerates in Marshall Division. The data and the trend is nothing new to local practitioners, but the quotes are a gem. "There are just so many cases, I can't handle them all," Judge Ward says, but notes that he no longer has to - Judge Everingham, who came on the bench as a magistrate judge in Marshall in April 2007 is trying cases in which parties on both sides have given their consent (which as practitioners know is approximately 50-60%). "It helps a lot," Judge Ward says, which is still something of an understatement.
My favorite quote comes from Judge Leonard Davis over in Tyler, who says he currently has about 100 patent suits pending and has not encountered difficulties in managing that caseload. He estimated that, in most instances, the patent cases in his court (which are mostly Tyler cases) are going to trial within 24 to 30 months after they are filed. "Our rocket is still flying high," he said. Did I mention Judge Davis hears patent cases in Tyler? T-Y-L-E-R.
I do need to make one clarification to something I'm quoted as saying in the article, though. It quotes me as saying that "the Eastern District judges who hear patent cases are able to do only between 65 and 75 Markman hearings a year - substantially fewer than the number of suits filed annually." I was referring to the Eastern District judges who hear the patent cases in Marshall, not to each judge individually (which, with the possible exception of Judge Everingham would be a lower number, obviously), or to the district's overall capacity for claims construction festivities (which is substantially higher). Hey, they're good - but they're not that good.
The last two paragraphs contain what I think are two particularly good observations from Joseph Grinstein, a partner in Susman Godfrey in Houston, and, well, me. The article concludes:

Now of course I don't mean the judges have expertise only in Marshall - I especially don't mean it when I'm in Tyler, Texarkana, Sherman, Lufkin, Beaumont, and now Plano. But I'd be hard-pressed to name another three-judge division with three judges as experienced in patent cases as Judges Ward, Folsom and Everingham.