Two trials and two patent owner losses. Who said Texas was a plaintiff's dream? Could 101 be the most powerful invalidity attack in front of the jury? And a venue argument that was too much for Judge Albright.

 

SPEAKERS

Wayne Stacy, Michael Smith

 

Wayne Stacy  00:00

Welcome, everyone to the Berkeley Center for Law and Technology's Last Week in Texas podcast. I'm your host, Wayne Stacey, and we're here again with the famous Michael Smith. Michael, you want to kick us off with what happened in Texas last week?

 

Michael Smith  00:17

Well, sure, Wayne. I think the biggest news in Texas was last year, our annual Eastern District of Texas bench bar resumed in Plano. We had to cancel it last year because of the pandemic, but we were able to have it in person this year. And it was really great seeing everyone. We had almost 570 registered, and our previous high was in the high 400s. So we were very excited at the registrations. That really wasn't unexpected because we had over 100 people that flew to Texas for the planning meeting back in August. So we knew we'd have a lot of people there, but people were just very glad to be out. We didn't do the second night dinner at the Cowboys Stadium this year, we went to the Texas Rangers new ballpark in Arlington Global Life Gield. Of course, this being Texas, they'd already taken up the baseball diamond and put down the football field, because they'll be hosting the Army Air Force game on November the sixth. So we couldn't go on the field because they were still setting it up for football. But we went around, we went and had a line where attendees could practice in the Rangers batting cages, they fired balls at us. Everybody was wanting to know what the speed was. And I said and they told us it was 45, which I understand is a little slow. But I'm not a baseball guy. But we got to eat all the ballpark food, they have areas where you can go through a buffet and it has every food that is in the ballpark in one place. So it was incredibly unhealthy. But we got tours of everything. And it was just a great chance for everybody to socialize and visit and tell stories because obviously baseball is important to a lot of the people that are there, and they enjoyed visiting about it. So a great conference, very excited to get to do it.

 

Wayne Stacy  02:02

It's good to start hearing about people getting together again. You and I have talked about the practice of law can be pretty isolating. And then practice of litigation can set up a lot of adversarial situations. Dinner beer hot dog at the ballpark helps make litigations go a little bit easier. And people reach some some reasonable resolutions on things.

 

Michael Smith  02:22

Oh, it absolutely does. I talked to a number of people that are that are opposite me in cases right now. And it was a great to visit to visit with them. And oh yeah, it's good to be working with you again on such and such case. And the next day when I got back to the office, I could already tell if the problem came up, I was going to be able to email people realize that we were both trying to come to a reasonable solution on something. It really was great for that reason. And of course we get to hear a lot of great lawyers and a lot of good judges talking to us about what works and what doesn't work. A lot of in House Counsel, I learned things, a lot of things that I didn't know.

 

Wayne Stacy  02:57

Well, Michael, I saw the panel that you are moderating incredibly important everywhere but especially for people from the Eastern District  and Western District because it's drawing so much media attention these days. You know, everybody's coming to that docket looking for st