U.S. District Judge Beth Labson Freeman, Northern District of California.

Patent trials are ramping back up as federal courts take the first steps toward fully reopening their doors.

Jury trials are scheduled to get under way during the next six weeks in at least the Eastern and Western districts of Texas. Another had been set to begin in the Northern District of California next month until a new general order released Thursday delayed all civil jury trials until at least October. And a bench trial that's part in-person, part virtual is under consideration in the Southern District of New York.

Judges are getting creative about ways to make participants, especially jurors, feel safe. U.S. District Judge Beth Labson Freeman of the Northern District of California, who had set a June 22 trial date for Finjan v. Cisco Systems, planned to utilize the San Jose courthouse's large ceremonial courtroom before Thursday's general order in her district came down. She had planned to use tape to indicate where participants could safely stand and sit. And she intended to send jurors to an empty courtroom during breaks and deliberations, where they could maintain more space than in a traditional jury room.

"Judge Freeman has clearly put a lot of thought into it," Fish & Richardson partner Juanita Brooks, who is part of Finjan's trial team, said in an interview earlier in the week.

Western District of Texas Judge Alan Albright said he's blessed with a large courtroom and jury box in his courtroom in Waco, Texas, where trial in MV3 Partners v. Roku is scheduled to begin June 29. Because the jury room is small, deliberations will instead be held in the basketball-court-sized jury assembly room, "so they would be able to self-space however they want to," Albright said.

Western District of Texas Judge Alan Albright

Albright said he and Freeman recently spent an hour on the phone brainstorming ideas, and he fully intends to debrief with U.S. District Chief Judge Rodney Gilstrap of the Eastern District of Texas, who is scheduled to start a patent trial earlier in June.

"I think at some point we do need to get back to trials," said Albright, who noted that patents are a depreciating asset. "The only way for each region of the country to know that it's ready is to do it."

Not every region is ready. The Southern District of New York has suspended jury trials indefinitely. Gov. Andrew Cuomo has extended the state's stay-at-home order to June 13, and SDNY's standing order on operations notes that at least four weeks will likely be required to assemble a jury venire panel.