So far in November, Delaware Chief Judge Colm F. Connolly has held two extraordinary evidentiary hearings, to evaluate the compliance of patent plaintiffs Backertop Licensing LLC, Lamplight Licensing LLC, Mellaconic IP LLC, and Nimitz Technologies LLC with standing orders, new this past April, regarding corporate and third-party litigation funding disclosures. Thereafter, Judge Connolly handed down a set of orders requiring extraordinarily sweeping production to the court of materials related to, for example, communications between the plaintiffs, its “consultant” handling litigation, and various attorneys. Nimitz filed a petition for a writ of mandamus from the Federal Circuit to intervene, using extraordinary language to describe the district court’s actions, as, for example, conducting “perverse prying into the innards of [Nimitz’s] finances, business, and prosecution”. The Federal Circuit stayed Judge Connolly’s order in the Nimitz case, triggering stays in the other suits, with all this extraordinary activity continuing to ripple through other Delaware cases over Thanksgiving week.