FIRST:

Federal Court System has been on a FAST TRACK for quite some time now. Everything is processed according to time tables set by the Court...

Depending on the complextity of the cases filed a time line of 2.5-4 years is normal life span of a law suit filed in Federal Courts. It can be shorter, if it is a SHORT CAUSE, or it may go longer if it entails many MOTIONS etc. And this does not include APPELLATE matters...

All of you had experience with this in the Degicor vs. EDIG case. So what is this RP is exaggerating business?...

SECOND:

There is no question that patent infringement cases fall in the COMPLEX CASES catagory.

LASTLY:

A great deal has been written and talked about here about the MARKMAN HERARING in PATENT LITIGATION. You can look it up using Wikipedia, or Google. That way you will not work yourself up in a tizzy for no reason at all. WE ARE in good hands, and DM knows what they are doing. For God's sake, they convinced the Supreme Court to issue the decision in Markman Case...

The long and the short of the Markman case is that the Supreme Court decided that A JUDGE assisted by experts would be a better person to decide the technical matters relating to validity of a patent than the average citizens composing the JURY in such cases.

And there is Appellate case decision holding in essence that once a Markman Ruling is made that a patent s Valid, the only question left for the Jury to decide is how much is owed by the defendants to the plaintiff..(see, Sandisk v. S.M.T.Microelectronics)...

IMO DM has been using TIER I cases to collect as much booty as possible by way of settlements and considering that he has to fund the costs, and there are 160+ cases left to prosecute, this is a logical and great strategy. Which means DM is not IN A HURRY TO GET TO THE markman Hearing stage of EDIG case. However, should that be necessary, he has already said that such a Hearing would be taking place no later than the Fall of 2010, within the framework of the 19 cases that are in Court now.

And there is no need to get a Markman Hearing in every single case he files from now on. Once a Markman Ruling is issued about any one patent it governs all future claims made under that patent.

That is one reason IMO a Markman Hearing will probably occur in a Law suit for Tier II cases which names 30-50 biggees, plus 200 DOES...

I hope this helps...

Gil...

Back to planting my SILVER SPRUCE TREE...