On Feb. 3, Judge Sue L. Robinson, the longest-serving member of the U.S. District Court for the District of Delaware (and the district judge with the second-highest number of patent cases assigned on a per judge basis in the country) acquired another title—that of senior judge. That announcement, set forth in a post on the district court’s website, also contained the news that Robinson will fully retire in the summer of 2017. We will address below both the short- and long-term impacts of Robinson’s transition into senior status on the court’s assignment of new criminal and new civil cases.
District Dynamics
In the last PricewaterhouseCoopers Patent Litigation Survey, District of Delaware Judges Robinson and Gregory M. Sleet and Chief Judge Leonard P. Stark, in that order, were the top three most active U.S. district court judges (based on number of patent decisions) between 1996 and 2015. This statistic is even more remarkable considering that Stark became an Article III judge only in 2010. Whereas the national average for intellectual property case load was 20.8 cases per judge in 2015 (the last year of complete data), in Delaware, each District of Delaware judge had, on average, a remarkable 165 cases. Although this volume of cases continues to keep the District of Delaware judges very busy, it also means that the District of Delaware is a highly experienced forum for handling complex intellectual property matters. Robinson’s expertise will certainly be missed; however, even in her absence, the remaining wealth of experience will continue to be of great benefit to litigants in Delaware.
