The Delaware federal district court is enlisting the help of four visiting judges from the U.S. District Court of the Eastern District of Pennsylvania to manage the caseload of an outgoing judge, as it braces for a large wave of patent cases that appears to be headed in its direction.

Judges Mitchell Goldberg, Gerald McHugh, Mark Kearney and Senior Judge Eduardo Robreno are expected to pick up the caseload of Judge Sue L. Robinson, who has taken senior status and plans to retire from the U.S. District Court for the District of Delaware this summer.

Robinson has stopped taking new cases, and many of her cases have already been funneled into a vacant judgeship docket, where they are initially overseen by the court's three magistrate judges. In an unsigned statement provided by Chief Judge Leonard P. Stark's chambers, the court said it would immediately begin to reassign portions of Robinson's cases to the roster of visiting judges, and the bulk of her docket would be reassigned when she officially steps down in July.