Well, I don't know that we've been good enough to deserve it this year thus far, but we sure got some presents this morning at the bimonthly patent case status conference (essentially case management conferences for new filings) in Marshall. Judge Ward announced that he and Judge Everingham would be filling in the holes in their docket where cases that were set for Markman hearings or trials had settled - and promptly started handing out Markman and trial settings that were a year to a year and a half quicker than those last given out.
The first cases up got Markmans as early as February of next year, and trial settings in September of next year - compare this to the last batch were Markmans in late 2011 and trial settings in early 2012. I did the math on the time to trial and realized we were seeing trial settings as short as 15 months and no longer (on the cases I checked) than 27 months from the last answer. On average they looked to be a little under two years - and in some cases significantly under (although the shorter ones appeared to be in cases where there was a prior related case, or the case had spent a substantial amount of time waiting on answers from defendants - in some cases as long as ten months).
As I've told numerous people, I expected that the Marshall trial settings would start coming down once the large influx of patent filing in 2007 and 2008 worked their way through the system (current filings districtwide are a little over half what they were in 2007) but it looks like the Court found a way to head back towards the two year norm sooner than anyone thought. (Trial settings in Tyler and Lufkin have held steady at a little under two years for some time - the docket delay has only been in Marshall).