A Blog About Intellectual Property Litigation and the District of Delaware


Entries for tag: Trial Scheduling

Court Cancels Trial, and Instead Schedules Third, Fourth, and Fifth Hearings on Summary Judgment

Andrew E. Russell, Oct. 17, 2025
Trial Trial Practice

Calendar
Adam Tinworth, Unsplash

Hearings on motions for summary judgment in patent cases in the District of Delaware can vary in length, but they are typically measured in hours, rather than days.

That's why it was interesting to see the below order by Judge Burke in Scale Biosciences, Inc. v. Parse Biosciences, Inc., C.A. No. 22-1597-CJB (D. Del.) earlier this week.

In it, the Court cancelled a trial set to start Monday, and instead scheduled almost three full days' worth of hearings next week on six pending motions for summary judgment, plus two other motions:

ORAL ORDER: For the reasons discussed with the parties at last Friday’s hearing, the trial previously scheduled to begin on October 20, …
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Judge Williams Declines to Expand Trial Time, Move Trial Date

Andrew E. Russell, May 24, 2024
Trial Time Trial Scheduling

Defendants are often (but not always) the ones who just happen to want to move a trial back.
Defendants are often (but not always) the ones who just happen to want to move a trial back. AI-Generated

Trial dates in Delaware generally tend to stick, with certain exceptions (e.g., parties moving to extend the schedule, particularly the dispositive motion deadlines).

We saw an example of that this week in International Business Machines Corporation v. Zynga, Inc., C.A. No. 22-590-GWB (D. Del.). There, the defendant tried to delay trial based on schedule issues, an O2 Micro issue, and to permit expert report supplementation based on potential new evidence. The Court didn't go for it:

ORAL ORDER: The Court has reviewed the parties' letters regarding the trial schedule (D.I. 445, 449, 450). Zynga's request to alter the …
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That Just Sounds Like a Stipulation with Extra Steps

Emily S. DiBenedetto, May 22, 2023
Stipulation Scheduling

Alpine Forget-me-not. Myosotis alpestris (1925)
Alpine Forget-me-not. Myosotis alpestris (1925) Mary Morris Vaux Walcott

Stipulations to extend time are a popular, both as a topic on this blog and in how routinely they are filed. Usually, stipulations to extend time are granted without incident, so we highlight the outliers as reminders that sometimes there’s more to it than mere agreement between the parties.

Don’t forget! If you’re stipulating to extend the:

  1. Deadline for discovery completion, or
  2. Postponement of trial

You must include the reasons for the request in your stipulation or motion. And the local rules require you to include either a supporting affidavit by the requesting counsel’s client or a certification that counsel has sent a copy of the request to the client.

This latter requirement reminds me of pre-college: in which students who received sub-optimal test scores needed to get a parental signature to prove to the teacher that the parent had seen the score and reviewed the offending test.

The parties in The Trustees of the University of Pennsylvania v. Genentech, Inc., C.A. 22-145-MN-JLH demonstrated how to correct deficiencies. Earlier this month, Judge Noreika issued an oral order denying their prior ...

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To Plan A Trial

Nathan R. Hoeschen, Nov. 4, 2021
Trial Calendar Trial Scheduling

It's no secret that Delaware, like essentially everywhere else, has a huge number of trials scheduled for the coming months with many of our judges double and triple-booked with trials. As the pandemic backlog finally begins to clear, I thought it might be interesting to see if this congestion was having any effect on when trials were being scheduled for new cases., compared to our historical average. To that end, below is the current average time from scheduling order to trial for each of our Article 3 judges based on their 5 most recent schedules:

  • ANDREWS - 23.8 Months
  • CONNOLLY - 24.1 Months
  • NOREIKA - 25.3 Months
  • STARK - 24.2 Months

I was a bit surprised that these figures were …

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Judge Stark's 50-Hour ANDA Trial

Jeff Castellano, Jan. 12, 2021
ANDA Trial Scheduling

Trials in ANDA cases (also known as Hatch-Waxman cases) are usually very efficient matters. There is no jury, and the judges, lawyers, and witnesses that regularly try and participate in ANDA cases are well-practiced at maximizing the amount of evidence presented in each trial day (even where the issues are quite complicated and the parties numerous). So ANDA trials are often short, sometimes just a few days from start to finish.

Occasionally, however, even ANDA cases are too complicated to fit into a one-week-or-less trial. For example, Judge Stark recently stated that he may allocate up to 25 hours per side in an ANDA case set to go to trial later this week.

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