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I'm one of those hated attorneys. And, in my experience, while there are issues that sometimes may seem to outsiders like pointless minutae that keep people fro

I'm one of those hated attorneys. And, in my experience, while there are issues that sometimes may seem to outsiders like pointless minutae that keep people from getting at the real issues, the rules of civil procedure (especially at the federal level) are designed to do exactly what you want: to facilitate getting to the core of the issue as fast as possible (of course, if the core of the issue is a factual question, this can take a while due to pesky things like discovery and jury trials). Without more detail, the problems you describe sound, with respect, like the complaints of someone who does not really understand how litigation works. Maybe if you could put a little meat on the bones I (and we) could understand your criticisms of the system a little better. In this example, as you say, "there is a question as to whether this patent is valid or not, and whether it covers this particular issue or not." If the defendant thinks those are real issues, then one of the first things the rules would have you do is to file a motion to dismiss arguing exactly those points. If the judge agrees with you, the case is over and you go home. (Of course, there is the possibility that there are other claims that aren't subject to those arguments, or that the plaintiff could amend the complaint to add new legal theories, but that's another story.) To the extent it is true that courts "completely front-load all these arcane minor points" this is usually true only to the extent that these arcane issues are actually dispositive. EDIT: Try thinking about it this way: whether an issue is arcane, and not what a person might think is the "real" core of the issue, is sometimes orthogonal to whether that issue is dispositive. And there are usually good reasons for this--though reasons that may not be obvious to non-lawyers. This can, and should, result in courts spending what may seem to the untrained eye like too much time on arcane but dispositive issues in an attempt to resolve a case efficiently.

clavalle 10y ago
> one of the first things the rules would have you do is to file a motion to dismiss arguing exactly those points. Great! How much would getting to that point typically cost a defendant in the case of a fairly obvious bullshit patent?
- pdabbadabba 10y ago
  Possibly quite a bit, if you want it done well. And that's a problem. But that has little to do with the point I was making.
  - Mithaldu 10y ago
    Where do the "quite a bit" costs come from then, if they don't come from the arcana?
    - pdabbadabba 10y ago
      Not really. They usually come from the fact that legal services are just exceptionally expensive. This, in turn, is largely driven by the fact that, for companies with a lot of money and a lot at stake, legal services are also exceptionally valuable. This drives up rates across the entire industry. There are other dynamics as well, but I think this one dominates.
      - Mithaldu 10y ago
        I wasn't disagreeing, i was asking earnestly. Also, you didn't answer the question as asked. If the goal is "file motion telling judge 'patent is not valid' without doing literally anything else", what exactly is the money spent on?
        pdabbadabba 10y ago
        And I meant to give an earnest answer! If you are the defendant in a relatively simple patent case, where the patent is clearly invalid, the right procedural move is probably a motion to dismiss, which could come right at the beginning of the litigation. But merely drafting that motion will be costly, simply due to the cost of legal services. EDIT: Of course, it often is not actually clear whether a patent is valid and enforceable or not. This could require evidence from experts about obviousness, prior art, etc. Assembling all of this in a way that is fair to both sides, and presenting it to the court in a way that is clear and compelling, is difficult, as one might expect. So this idealized situation may not be too common. EDIT 2: In case it's not obvious, this shouldn't be taken as legal advice. Every situation is different, so you should hire yourself a lawyer, and not act based on general ruminations you read on the Internet by people like me. I am not your lawyer.
shasta 10y ago
Wow, a real patent lawyer in a patent law thread. You don't belong here, but I'll upvote whatever you have to write. I have a comment and a question: The comment. Summary judgement does not accomplish what I think sheepleherd was proposing. As you say, if you get a summary judgment against you, you go home. That means that a judge has to be convinced that there is definitely no case in order to issue one. What's needed, rather, is a speedy determination of who seems to be in the right. It should not be final but should determine who pays going forward. The question. What do you see as the problem in cases like this? Or do you see a problem?
- pdabbadabba 10y ago
  Well, first of all, I have to confess: I'm not a patent lawyer. I'm a regulatory lawyer. And, just so we have our terminology straight, summary judgment is actually different from the motion-to-dismiss phase I was describing. In super simple terms, the latter happens after the parties have has the chance to gather evidence and seeks to determine whether it is legally possible for a party to win at trial. Therefore it occurs late in litigation, after parties have already spent a lot of money (but still before trial). The former typically occurs before evidence is even gathered to determine whether the plaintiff could legally win even if all of his or her allegations were factually true. As for the threshold fee-shifting idea: I think it's probably not a good one. There are cases where it could help, but if the judge gets her threshold determination wrong, then it makes life even harder for a less wealthy litigant. The simplest solution, which many countries have implemented, is simply a loser pays system for legal fees. I'm not sure this is ideal either, but I think it is at least better. There also is usually a possibility that the judge could require the loser to pay after the fact, if she determines that the case was especially un-meritorious. Another possible reform would be to loosen the standard that judges apply in choosing whether to award fees in this way.
  - shasta 10y ago
    Patent lawyer or no, you're still more qualified than the average participant. I'm not sure what criteria you're using to judge that the proposal would be worse for a less wealthy litigant. Surely the proposal would be better in cases where one side is clearly right? The cost of patent litigation is currently huge. The only way a non-wealthy litigant can participate is with lawyers on contingency. No? But I suspect fixing the legal costs is only a part of the patent problem. My understanding is that cases like the OP regularly go to verdict and find for the troll.
sheepleherd 10y ago
In my cases, I felt that the court spent time on issues that were not only minor, but the court left them unopined. This just encourages laywers to keep doing it, it earns them more money. For example, and since you are an attorney I'll let you research this rather than give you the answer, does a signature on a shareholder petition under corporate by-laws require the word "certify" to be a valid signature? How much should be spent determining the answer to that? Seems pretty cut and dried to me, whether it is or is not required it's hardly breaking new legal ground. What's the answer? (and no weaseling out by saying "it depends". If you want to say "it depends", you need to finish the sentence, on what, and in that case the answer is what.)
- pdabbadabba 10y ago
  I have no idea! I'm not a corporate lawyer. And, frankly, I'm not surprised that it took a fair amount of legal work to figure out the answer. I, like you I take it, have the intuition that the answer should be "no." But I'm also not confident that the answer is not "yes." If the answer is "yes," I'd say the odds are 50/50 that there is a good reason behind it. (If, as one should, you count as a good reason "there is binding precedent in this circuit that says it must use the word 'certify'" then the odds jump to pretty near 100%.) But I will say that, if you're trying to argue that the legal system is too arcane and complicated, a lawsuit over a "shareholder petition under corporate by-laws" is an exceptionally poor example. This is an especially technical areas of law that, among other things, makes the almost explicit assumption that, given the subject matter, parties will be unusually sophisticated and well resourced.
  - sheepleherd 10y ago
    There is no answer, there is no law, no standard, no precedent, which any "unusually sophisticated" lawyer looking at it for a few minutes would realize. But instead of informing the "unusually sophisticated" court honestly "hey, I had this idea, but I researched it and it doesn't look like there is anything directly applicable" (you know, truth, whole truth, nothing but, and no standing by while the court is misled) lawyers get to raise a huge holy stink about it. After I pay for the huge holy stink, do I get an answer? nope. That means that it could come up again tomorrow and I'd have to pay for it again. Lawyers have huge laundry lists of these ideas they get to spitball, except they get paid to do it, the more they spitball the more they get paid, and none of it has anything to do with the matter at hand, the legitimate grievance that the two sides have and are trying to resolve. I just found it on more than one occasion to be unusually playground bullying rather than sophisticated. And on the same-ish topic as sophistication, lawyers like to couch things they say in the cloak of "truth and justice", like for instance, how many times have I heard that the right to petition is so sacrosanct that it's in our Declaration of Independence? Yet went you actually try to pursue a right to petition you are bogged down in lawyerly bullshit.

clavalle 10y ago

> one of the first things the rules would have you do is to file a motion to dismiss arguing exactly those points. Great! How much would getting to that point typically cost a defendant in the case of a fairly obvious bullshit patent?

pdabbadabba 10y ago
Possibly quite a bit, if you want it done well. And that's a problem. But that has little to do with the point I was making.
- Mithaldu 10y ago
  Where do the "quite a bit" costs come from then, if they don't come from the arcana?
  - pdabbadabba 10y ago
    Not really. They usually come from the fact that legal services are just exceptionally expensive. This, in turn, is largely driven by the fact that, for companies with a lot of money and a lot at stake, legal services are also exceptionally valuable. This drives up rates across the entire industry. There are other dynamics as well, but I think this one dominates.
    - Mithaldu 10y ago
      I wasn't disagreeing, i was asking earnestly. Also, you didn't answer the question as asked. If the goal is "file motion telling judge 'patent is not valid' without doing literally anything else", what exactly is the money spent on?
      - pdabbadabba 10y ago
        And I meant to give an earnest answer! If you are the defendant in a relatively simple patent case, where the patent is clearly invalid, the right procedural move is probably a motion to dismiss, which could come right at the beginning of the litigation. But merely drafting that motion will be costly, simply due to the cost of legal services. EDIT: Of course, it often is not actually clear whether a patent is valid and enforceable or not. This could require evidence from experts about obviousness, prior art, etc. Assembling all of this in a way that is fair to both sides, and presenting it to the court in a way that is clear and compelling, is difficult, as one might expect. So this idealized situation may not be too common. EDIT 2: In case it's not obvious, this shouldn't be taken as legal advice. Every situation is different, so you should hire yourself a lawyer, and not act based on general ruminations you read on the Internet by people like me. I am not your lawyer.

shasta 10y ago

Wow, a real patent lawyer in a patent law thread. You don't belong here, but I'll upvote whatever you have to write. I have a comment and a question: The comment. Summary judgement does not accomplish what I think sheepleherd was proposing. As you say, if you get a summary judgment against you, you go home. That means that a judge has to be convinced that there is definitely no case in order to issue one. What's needed, rather, is a speedy determination of who seems to be in the right. It should not be final but should determine who pays going forward. The question. What do you see as the problem in cases like this? Or do you see a problem?

pdabbadabba 10y ago
Well, first of all, I have to confess: I'm not a patent lawyer. I'm a regulatory lawyer. And, just so we have our terminology straight, summary judgment is actually different from the motion-to-dismiss phase I was describing. In super simple terms, the latter happens after the parties have has the chance to gather evidence and seeks to determine whether it is legally possible for a party to win at trial. Therefore it occurs late in litigation, after parties have already spent a lot of money (but still before trial). The former typically occurs before evidence is even gathered to determine whether the plaintiff could legally win even if all of his or her allegations were factually true. As for the threshold fee-shifting idea: I think it's probably not a good one. There are cases where it could help, but if the judge gets her threshold determination wrong, then it makes life even harder for a less wealthy litigant. The simplest solution, which many countries have implemented, is simply a loser pays system for legal fees. I'm not sure this is ideal either, but I think it is at least better. There also is usually a possibility that the judge could require the loser to pay after the fact, if she determines that the case was especially un-meritorious. Another possible reform would be to loosen the standard that judges apply in choosing whether to award fees in this way.
- shasta 10y ago
  Patent lawyer or no, you're still more qualified than the average participant. I'm not sure what criteria you're using to judge that the proposal would be worse for a less wealthy litigant. Surely the proposal would be better in cases where one side is clearly right? The cost of patent litigation is currently huge. The only way a non-wealthy litigant can participate is with lawyers on contingency. No? But I suspect fixing the legal costs is only a part of the patent problem. My understanding is that cases like the OP regularly go to verdict and find for the troll.

sheepleherd 10y ago

In my cases, I felt that the court spent time on issues that were not only minor, but the court left them unopined. This just encourages laywers to keep doing it, it earns them more money. For example, and since you are an attorney I'll let you research this rather than give you the answer, does a signature on a shareholder petition under corporate by-laws require the word "certify" to be a valid signature? How much should be spent determining the answer to that? Seems pretty cut and dried to me, whether it is or is not required it's hardly breaking new legal ground. What's the answer? (and no weaseling out by saying "it depends". If you want to say "it depends", you need to finish the sentence, on what, and in that case the answer is what.)

pdabbadabba 10y ago
I have no idea! I'm not a corporate lawyer. And, frankly, I'm not surprised that it took a fair amount of legal work to figure out the answer. I, like you I take it, have the intuition that the answer should be "no." But I'm also not confident that the answer is not "yes." If the answer is "yes," I'd say the odds are 50/50 that there is a good reason behind it. (If, as one should, you count as a good reason "there is binding precedent in this circuit that says it must use the word 'certify'" then the odds jump to pretty near 100%.) But I will say that, if you're trying to argue that the legal system is too arcane and complicated, a lawsuit over a "shareholder petition under corporate by-laws" is an exceptionally poor example. This is an especially technical areas of law that, among other things, makes the almost explicit assumption that, given the subject matter, parties will be unusually sophisticated and well resourced.
- sheepleherd 10y ago
  There is no answer, there is no law, no standard, no precedent, which any "unusually sophisticated" lawyer looking at it for a few minutes would realize. But instead of informing the "unusually sophisticated" court honestly "hey, I had this idea, but I researched it and it doesn't look like there is anything directly applicable" (you know, truth, whole truth, nothing but, and no standing by while the court is misled) lawyers get to raise a huge holy stink about it. After I pay for the huge holy stink, do I get an answer? nope. That means that it could come up again tomorrow and I'd have to pay for it again. Lawyers have huge laundry lists of these ideas they get to spitball, except they get paid to do it, the more they spitball the more they get paid, and none of it has anything to do with the matter at hand, the legitimate grievance that the two sides have and are trying to resolve. I just found it on more than one occasion to be unusually playground bullying rather than sophisticated. And on the same-ish topic as sophistication, lawyers like to couch things they say in the cloak of "truth and justice", like for instance, how many times have I heard that the right to petition is so sacrosanct that it's in our Declaration of Independence? Yet went you actually try to pursue a right to petition you are bogged down in lawyerly bullshit.