Texas Lawyer's John Council has apparently exhausted the story possibilities as to recently retired Eastern District of Texas judges so he has (possibly reluctantly) shifted to talking to judges who aren't retiring about their patent dockets at a recent judges' panel in Dallas with Chief Judge Leonard Davis and Magistrate Judge John Love from the Eastern District and Ed Kinkeade (Baylor Lawyer of the Year 2010 for those of you that care about that sort of thing) and David Godbey of the Northern District of Texas, both of whom have opted in under the new patent pilot program to hear patent cases.
The same issue of the magazine also has an article about Judge Davis' recent practice of permitting jurors to submit questions to witnesses in a patent case, which I mentioned the other day. The article notes as I did that all 11 lawyers polled in the case liked the procedure. The article doesn't say if that poll was before or after the jury came back with its verdict finding the patent claims infringed, but the claims themselves invalid, but I'm guessing before.
