Today’s issue of The Recorder, an ALM publication in California, includes an article about the Eastern District of Texas (“Big Tech Shouts ‘Yipee!,’ Patent Bar Chattering as Rader Heads to Texas”).
To help prepare for his imminent elevation to chief judge of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, Judge Randall Rader will preside over five cases in Texas’ Eastern District in April. While the article devotes much of its space to describing the tension between the Eastern District and the Federal Circuit and the stir Rader’s early rulings have provoked, it concludes with as fine a representation of East Texas hospitality as you’re likely to find. Members of the Eastern District of Texas Bar Association are continuing a tradition from before the days when the Court had a resident judge by preparing a dinner in honor of Rader at a small, lakeside lodge. According to Michael C. Smith, a partner in the Marshall office of Siebman, Burg, Phillips & Smith, L.L.P. who maintains a blog about the Eastern District, the menu will include “fried chicken, catfish, slaw, vegetables, pancakes, and cobbler.”
In 2006, Smith wrote an article for the Texas Bar Journal about the Marshall Court’s patent docket (“Rocket Docket: Marshall Court Leads Nation in Hearing Patent Cases”). The article is worth linking to if only for the photo that manages to capture in a single frame a successful patent application, the courthouse, the U.S. flag, and a pick-up truck. East Texas hospitality, indeed.