A Blog About Intellectual Property Litigation and the District of Delaware


Entries for tag: Deadlines

Nightmare Birds
Alessandro Benassi, Unsplash

Missing a notice of appeal deadline is a nightmare scenario for an attorney. It's easy to imagine how it could happen: Final judgments can come at somewhat random times, and it's not a deadline that PACER flags for counsel. And, depending on how things go, it may be difficult or impossible to get the deadline extended. If that happens, that's it: your case may be over.

It looks like this nightmare almost played out in a recent District of Delaware case.

In Belden Canada ULC v. CommScope, Inc., C.A. No. 22-782-RGA (D. Del.), the Court entered a final judgment on October 14, 2025. The notice of appeal was due Thursday, November 13, 2025 …

AI
Markus Winkler, Unsplash

An order on Friday reminded me of a local counsel issue that comes up from time to time here in D. Del.

Whenever a party files a motion or a brief, the docket on PACER automatically includes a due date, like so:

312 OPENING BRIEF in Support re 311 MOTION to Amend Judgment, filed by ViaTech Technologies Inc..Answering Brief/Response due date per Local Rules is 11/8/2023. (Mayo, Andrew) . . . (Entered: 10/25/2023)

ViaTech Technologies, Inc. v. Adobe Inc., C.A. No. 20-358-RGA-JLH (D. Del. Oct. 25, 2023).

The docket text is not perfectly clear, but that due date is automatically generated based on a set of rules in PACER (that are …