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I can't believe cases like this are actually decided by a jury trial. There's no way 12 random people shown a video about the patent system can be expected to

• spobo 14y ago
  I completely agree. If this is true then it's fascinating how incorrect and inefficient the justice system works.
• Retric 14y ago
  It's just about meaningless until after the appeals.
• stdgy 14y ago
  The Jury isn't actually deciding all that much here, especially considering their non-answer to the Fair Use question. The Judge gave them generous instructions, including the stipulation that APIs are covered by copyright, in order to try and limit the potential for a mistrial. He still has to make the ruling on whether APIs(Or some definition of an APIs SSO...) are indeed covered by copyright, which is the crux of the case. It doesn't sound like he'll be making that ruling until at least midway through this month. Edit: I'm not sure mistrial is precisely what I mean. Maybe just re-trial? Any clarification would be appreciated.
• guan 14y ago
  I tend to agree with you about jury trials, but having the “real” decisions made by specialist judges in the Federal Circuit has dangers too. Many legal scholars believe that the trend toward allowing more software and business method patents in the 1980s and 1990s occurred because of Federal Circuit judges who were too embedded in the patent bar, and that it was allowed to continue without enough review because with all patent appeals coming out of one circuit, there were no circuit splits (disagreements between circuit courts of appeal), which is the usual way cases reach the US Supreme Court. In any case it would be difficult for the trial judge or the Federal Circuit to ignore jury decisions on factual questions like the ones that were decided here, unless the result was egregiously wrong. Legal questions like whether APIs are copyrightable will almost certainly be reviewed on appeal. [added] The dangers of judges who are too specialized was actually recognized when the Federal Circuit was set up, so the court was also given jurisdiction over a few other areas, such as appeals from the Court of Federal Claims, to prevent it from being overly specialized. I haven’t seen recent figures, but I do believe that the docket is dominated by patent cases.
  • Jach 14y ago
    I think the legal scholars have excellent reasons to believe what they believe. Here's one: http://www.ipwatchdog.com/2012/03/20/supreme-court-mayo-v-prometheus/id=22920/ http://www.ipwatchdog.com/2012/03/20/supreme-court-mayo-v-pr...
  • rayiner 14y ago
    It's not just that Federal Circuit judges are embedded in the patent bar, but also that judges are quite intellectual and academic and it is in vogue among academic circles to treat intellectual property like real property. Real property has a very strong right of exclusion (you can't be on my land no matter what you're doing on it, whether it hurts me or not or benefits society or not).
    • wisty 14y ago
      Economists classify goods as being either rivalrous or non-rivalrous, and either excludable or non-excludable. The ownership of IP is, in a sense, a private good (excludable and rivalrous), just like a car. Take patents - can buy and sell them, they're hard to steal, and only one person can have it. However, the right to use (not own) IP is not a private good. While the original copyright or patent may be unique (therefore rivalrous) and easy to defend (thus excludable), expressions of it are not. Non-excludable, non-rivalrous goods (the right to use IP) are a little harder to reason about.
      • ktizo 14y ago
        Cars are excludable and rivalrous property based on the fact they are physical objects that are of a size easy to possess and it is very hard in physical terms for them to not be so. Patents, on the other hand, are excludable and rivalrous only in the tautological sense. They are defined within law as excludable and rivalrous, so therefore they are excludable and rivalrous. Patents could be redefined in numerous ways that are not excludable and rivalrous, such as including anyone else who can give reasonable proof that they came up with the idea at the same time or independently. Also, it would not be that great a stretch to limit their transferability, so that they cannot be treated as a normal asset.
• gcb 14y ago
  If some law/issue can't be understood by 12 random people and multi-million dollar legal teams... i don't want to live in this world anymore
  • Nitramp 14y ago
    > If some law/issue can't be understood by 12 random people and multi-million dollar legal teams [...] Let me rephrase that. > If some issue cannot be understood by 12 random people heavily influenced by two multi-million dollar legal teams [...] And now imagine "issue" being anything you're not intimately familiar with. There are many things in this world that I fail to understand, and probably never will. Law on this level is just as complicated as any other advanced topic, and the effect of a judgement on society can be profound. I totally don't get the whole jury thing in cases as technical/complex as this (and by that I don't mean the computer science aspect, but the law aspect).
    • rayiner 14y ago
      The jury doesn't really understand the subtleties of the law either. They're given a lot of hand-holding, and asked pointed questions about what they determine to be factually true. The judge explains to them the legal implications for their factual findings.
    • cookiecaper 14y ago
      Juries were concocted to make judgments on fundamental moral issues. That's why "12 random strangers" works -- the law is supposed to reflect the common moral standpoint of the society, so selecting any twelve adults of sound mind from the community generally gives you that. Where deep technical knowledge is required to understand the implications of a verdict, I think that the "community" should be defined as the community whose domain is primarily effected (in this case, computer scientists/software engineers). This doesn't sound too horrible to me. Perhaps the fact that we need specialized juries should be a signal that our law is too specialized. Most things that should be illegal can be described rather succinctly when it gets down to it, and I think "no way twelve random people could comprehend" could be useful bright barrier line for "Maybe we're losing a little bit of control here..."
• fusiongyro 14y ago
  (edited) I think the jury did just fine. They have punted on the hard problem, but I think the rest of their determinations are quite fair. This doesn't look like the case that will impeach the jury system to me.
  • bhousel 14y ago
    from TFA: "After the partial copyright verdict was read, Judge Alsup launched right into the patent phase without even giving a break. Right now, the jury is watching a video about patents and patent lawsuits produced by the Federal Judicial Center, which is commonly shown to patent juries. Court will probably adjourn after opening statements today, and witnesses will begin testifying tomorrow, possibly including a repeat show by Jonathan Schwartz, the ex-Sun CEO. The patent phase is expected to be concluded in as little as one week. "
    • fusiongyro 14y ago
      My bad. It just hasn't been so far.
• carbocation 14y ago
  Imagine the same statement being made about medical malpractice. At the end of the day, I'm OK with "random" juries making these decisions. There is quite a bit of apparatus in place to prevent major error, and the law can always be changed (obviously it's not easy to do so, but it's possbile) in response to an undesirable decision.
  • bhousel 14y ago
    I think even in cases of medical malpractice, most parties would better be served through arbitration than through a jury trial.
    • rayiner 14y ago
      Arbitration is terrible. Arbitrators have a huge incentive to be biased in favor of the party that will bring them repeat business (the insurance company). Arbitration vastly prejudices the little guy in these disputes.
• philwelch 14y ago
  It's democracy. The purpose of a jury trial isn't to get the most accurate result, it's to give the people direct control over the government. It's just as true, if not more true, to say that elections are a terrible way of fairly selecting lawmakers and presidents.
  • Karunamon 14y ago
    The problem there is that correctness is almost completely on par with justice. If the jury gets it wrong (condemning an innocent man, what have you) law be damned, justice was not served. The policies of politicos is a much more grey area with consequences not so immediate and very subjective many, many years after the fact.
    • philwelch 14y ago
      The tradeoff is between a possibly marginal improvement in accuracy between juries and trained judges and the risk of the entire system becoming unaccountable and systemically unjust. Since the system is already designed to optimize for false acquittals, it's not an entirely bad idea.
• rayiner 14y ago
  The cases aren't decided by jury trial. It's not like law and order where the jury returns "guilty/not guilty." The jury makes factual findings used by the judge to issue a ruling. What this article refers to (using poor, imprecise language in the headline) is the jury's finding that Google copied, in the literal sense of the term, the Java API's. This is something the jury is totally qualified to decide. They can see the snippets of code put forth as evidence. They might not understand how it works, but they can see whether they are similar or not. From here, the judge will decide whether API's are copyrightable. This is the real show. We know Google copied the API, the real question in this trial is whether that API is protectable under copyright law. The judge will answer this question. After that, the jury will answer whether Google's copying is eligible for the fair use defense. That is to say, even if they did copy, and even if API's are protectable, was Google's use nonetheless of a kind that qualifies as "fair use." This decision doesn't really involve "nerd esoterica."
• njharman 14y ago
  Almost any trial that goes to jury is just as over 12 random peoples heads. Anything with forensics, anything that has expert witness. Even just understanding byzantine laws in the US is over everyone's heads. As most of this trial has more to do with copyright law than anything technological. "nerd" stuff doen't have monopoly on complex