4 ms·

Don't celebrate too much yet. This is likely to be appealed. I think the judge did a good job in trying to make sure this decision stands on appeal but until t

Don't celebrate too much yet. This is likely to be appealed. I think the judge did a good job in trying to make sure this decision stands on appeal but until the appeal process is over, this could still turn ugly.

chimeracoder 14y ago
IANAL, but I'm not sure that this is too likely, because of the way that Alsup separated the jury's decision from his own. Prosecution can't appeal a jury's acquittal; in this case, Alsup's ruling is separated from the jury's decision (remember when he told them to 'assume APIs are copyrightable'), so I'm not sure what the possible courses of legal action are here. This is a subtle point, so I imagine one would have to be a lawyer to answer this one, though I have a suspicion that there may not be a precedent here (or, if there is, it's a weak enough precedent that it could still reasonably go either way).
- DannyBee 14y ago
  I can't speak very much or about this particular case (because i'm involved), but i can tell you you are confusing civil and criminal law. You are correct that in a criminal case, the government cannot generally appeal a jury acquittal . In a civil case, you can appeal a jury verdict (in practice, I'm being deliberately loose with terminology to make this understandable), the usual method is to file a post-judgement motion for judgement as a matter of law, and then appeal its denial, or appeal the jury instructions, or ...
  - chimeracoder 14y ago
    I know civil and criminal are different; however, I thought that was the whole point of the special jury instructions (making it impossible/more difficult for his ruling to be overturned on appeal). In any case, I guess we'll see soon....
    - DannyBee 14y ago
      Sadly, I can't comment on the jury instructions except to encourage you to look around at other patent and copyright cases and see if you think they are really all that special or different. I can say it is statistically more difficult to overturn jury verdicts than it is to overturn judge verdicts. On the patent side, you can find interesting but slightly out of date data here: http://www.patentlyo.com/patent/2010/04/are-appeals-at-the-federal-circuit-a-coin-flip.html http://www.patentlyo.com/patent/2010/04/are-appeals-at-the-f... You should be able to figure out which issues are eliminated by having mainly a jury decision on patents instead of a judge decision.

chimeracoder 14y ago

IANAL, but I'm not sure that this is too likely, because of the way that Alsup separated the jury's decision from his own. Prosecution can't appeal a jury's acquittal; in this case, Alsup's ruling is separated from the jury's decision (remember when he told them to 'assume APIs are copyrightable'), so I'm not sure what the possible courses of legal action are here. This is a subtle point, so I imagine one would have to be a lawyer to answer this one, though I have a suspicion that there may not be a precedent here (or, if there is, it's a weak enough precedent that it could still reasonably go either way).

DannyBee 14y ago
I can't speak very much or about this particular case (because i'm involved), but i can tell you you are confusing civil and criminal law. You are correct that in a criminal case, the government cannot generally appeal a jury acquittal . In a civil case, you can appeal a jury verdict (in practice, I'm being deliberately loose with terminology to make this understandable), the usual method is to file a post-judgement motion for judgement as a matter of law, and then appeal its denial, or appeal the jury instructions, or ...
- chimeracoder 14y ago
  I know civil and criminal are different; however, I thought that was the whole point of the special jury instructions (making it impossible/more difficult for his ruling to be overturned on appeal). In any case, I guess we'll see soon....
  - DannyBee 14y ago
    Sadly, I can't comment on the jury instructions except to encourage you to look around at other patent and copyright cases and see if you think they are really all that special or different. I can say it is statistically more difficult to overturn jury verdicts than it is to overturn judge verdicts. On the patent side, you can find interesting but slightly out of date data here: http://www.patentlyo.com/patent/2010/04/are-appeals-at-the-federal-circuit-a-coin-flip.html http://www.patentlyo.com/patent/2010/04/are-appeals-at-the-f... You should be able to figure out which issues are eliminated by having mainly a jury decision on patents instead of a judge decision.