They did WHAT with my filing?

Just saw some activity on the Internet about a new Eastern District patent case ESN v. Cisco filed 10/15 or 10/16 (depending on who you ask).  I don't know anything about the case or the controversy over the filing date, but let me offer a couple of observations.  (That's the great thing about blogging - you can not know a darn thing about the facts ... but does that stop you?  Nah!)
First of all, in reading posts on this I remembered that we're in the middle of switching to an online filing of cases system (it's optional now but after the current batch of local rules changes is reviewed by the judges next week it might become mandatory), and in the local rules committee discussion back in July a potential problem came up with the current system.  Briefly, to file a complaint online under the current (or recent - some changes are occurring probably as we speak) you contact the clerk's office and they set your case up in the system, and then the case is actually filed when you electronically upload the complaint (you usually have 24 hours or thereabouts, and remember that it is the filing of the complaint that commences the case under FRCP 3). 
But I think the filing info is available online when they set it up.  The significance of this is that if you are trying to file and time is of the essence - say a standstill agreement is expiring, or you're worried about someone DJing you, your intentions are broadcast to the world (or at least everyone that's trolling the Eastern District's dockets, which sometimes feels that way) a day before you actually file the case.  That's why a lot of time-sensitive cases are not filed online, but rather are filed using the drop-box at the courthouse - a time-honored way of winning races to the courthouse dating back to the mid-1990's (long before the days of patent holding companies, when it was Fortune 500 companies slugging it out on both sides.  So of course this is all perfectly aboveboard).
Many are the lawyers who have sat outside an ED drop box as midnight drew near, sticking pieces of paper in to see what time the stamp had, and then frantically jamming in complaints once the time switched to midnight to save that all-important 12:00 time (there's actually an opinion by Judge Folsom back in 1996 that waxes poetic about this happening on a cold New Year's Eve in Tyler "as champagne corks popped and shots rang out welcoming the stroke of midnight" as His Honor put it, as local residents fired off firearms into the night to celebrate the new year).  Another tactic used in the Northern District of Texas, as I recall, was getting a clerk to take a file stamp home and then having them file-stamp on New Year's Day, assuming that since it was a holiday the yahoos from the Eastern District on the other side would then be second-filed.  That particular game of rock-paper-drop box was played out in 1996, and the drop box (and the yahoos) won.
But I digress ... I wonder if that might be what happened here - the materials to set up the file were sent over 10/15, then the complaint was electronically uploaded - which is the actual commencement of the case under FRCP 3 - on 10/16. But in the interim Cisco saw the file set up online (or maybe they didn't and they just guessed right) and got a DJ on file elsewhere (whether it was before or after the ESN filing - assuming that that's what happened - I have no idea, but that's immensely important).  So all this talk on the Internet about manufacturing subject matter jurisdiction by post-dating the complaint to 10/.16 may be missing the point - under the clerk's office's procedures the thing may not have been filed till 10/16 - all the stamping and dating on the materials that were delivered to the clerk's office to set up the case won't matter if they were not the "filing" of the complaint, but merely setting up the file for an online filing the next day, per the local requirements for electronic filing.  Nor will it matter (in my opinion, although since under the Supreme Court's recent decision in Bowles v. Russell, 127 S.Ct. 2360, 2363 (2007) "you screwed up, you trusted us" is a valid excuse when someone gets executed due to a mistake by court staff, it's hard to see why you couldn't lose a first to file race because the clerk's office filed a complaint they weren't supposed to) how the clerk did or didn't docket isn't relevant - the time of the online filing of the complaint is what matters.  But it wouldn't be the first time that what was intended to happen didn't happen, if that's what happened.
Just a heads up in case you see more about this - there may be some clerk's office procedures that made the case look like it was filed 10/15, when the court's file was in fact administratively opened then, but the actual filing pursuant to FRCP 3 didn't occur till the next day.  But what happened here I just don't know. 
I'm just morbidly curious to see how it turns out, because this is exactly the nightmare scenario we actually discussed in a local rules committee meeting three months ago, and designed the proposed new rules to prevent.  I can hardly wait to see how it comes out!