6 ms·

I don't get it. Why is it some kind of revelation that prospective jurors said they wouldn't let their previous experience with related issues influence their d

I don't get it. Why is it some kind of revelation that prospective jurors said they wouldn't let their previous experience with related issues influence their decision in the case? Isn't that bog standard voir dire stuff? ISTM that the legal system can't expect jurors to be blank slates on every issue, that's just impractical. A judgement would really be thrown out because a juror later commented that his foreman's experience with the patent system was useful during deliberations? Was the foreman supposed to forget he'd ever filed for a patent? That's a little like saying jurors deliberating over a hit-and-run can't discuss their own driving experience. IANAL, but surely the line you can't cross is a little further out.

jbri 14y ago
Surely "presenting yourself to the other jurors as an expert due to your prior experience" is over that line, no?
- twoodfin 14y ago
  What's the evidence that he presented himself as an expert? He obviously knew more about patents than some of the other jurors, so he was better able to explain some of the material presented during the trial. Would it have been better if he'd just stayed silent and left them confused? I can imagine what crossing a bright line would look like. Something like: "I know the judge told us X, but I'm an expert and really Y." But I don't think there's evidence that's what happened.
  - KirinDave 14y ago
    The interviews with other jurors made it clear that they deferred to his opinion in this case, the which makes it very hard for the foreman to deny what happened. Groklaw links a lot of the interviews so you can see for yourself, if you're curious. I'm not sure why people are surprised here. It's not like the verdict against Samsung wasn't warranted and won't be upheld in subsequent cases. The problem is the juror's dismissals of other patents held by Samsung that clearly were applicable. The only thing that makes this broken patent system remotely tolerable is a fiction of fairness. If we allow the jury to discard even this in punitive fashion, then things are worse than we realized. P.S., sorry for the first garbled iteration of this post. I'm still dialing in SwiftKey for tablets.
  - debacle 14y ago
    The other juror's statements make it clear that there was confusion on the jury, and instead of asking the judge (as jurors are supposed to do), they relied on the foreman's personal experiences.
- pja 14y ago
  Making assertions about patent law that are objectively false would surely be over that line too. Questions of law are for the judge, questions of guilt or innocence are for the jury. Isn't that the rule?
lnanek2 14y ago
This article is a continuation of many the site has posted. In previous articles they have gone on in detail about how the foreman ignored jury instructions. He invalidated prior art because the code wouldn't run on the iPhone processor, for example, and he said they calculated damages to send a message to Samsung and the industry as a whole. These things are both directly counter to the jury instructions, which do not require prior art to be binary compatible and state damages should only basically fix the amount of money lost by the other company, not be extreme to make a point. Here's one of the articles: http://www.groklaw.net/articlebasic.php?story=20120828225612963 http://www.groklaw.net/articlebasic.php?story=20120828225612... If the guy had that previous experience, but he followed the instructions, I don't think people would have complained. But instead he ignored instructions and took things into his own hands based on his incorrect perceptions of patent law he formed from his past experiences.
- twoodfin 14y ago
  I don't want to re-litigate all this, but her argument puts an awful lot of weight on 15 seconds of the foreman speaking extemporaneously during a TV interview. I don't think it's outrageous to believe that when he said "processor" he was referring to the two devices broadly, and that he reads the '381 patent as applying to a different kind of system than the DiamondTouch. Even she specifies that the Apple patent covered "portable multifunction devices", which the DiamondTouch manifestly is not. Again, I'm not arguing that the prior art is or isn't sufficient to throw out the patent. I'm only arguing that it's not a slam dunk that this juror "took things into his own hands" based on a few vague comments about their deliberations.
  - potatolicious 14y ago
    I don't think anyone here is ready to tar and feather the jury foreman here - but the fact that the interviews were given, and based on interviews with other jurors, it certainly seems suspicious. And considering $1bn is on the line, I don't think it's too much to ask that we investigate this.

jbri 14y ago

Surely "presenting yourself to the other jurors as an expert due to your prior experience" is over that line, no?

twoodfin 14y ago
What's the evidence that he presented himself as an expert? He obviously knew more about patents than some of the other jurors, so he was better able to explain some of the material presented during the trial. Would it have been better if he'd just stayed silent and left them confused? I can imagine what crossing a bright line would look like. Something like: "I know the judge told us X, but I'm an expert and really Y." But I don't think there's evidence that's what happened.
- KirinDave 14y ago
  The interviews with other jurors made it clear that they deferred to his opinion in this case, the which makes it very hard for the foreman to deny what happened. Groklaw links a lot of the interviews so you can see for yourself, if you're curious. I'm not sure why people are surprised here. It's not like the verdict against Samsung wasn't warranted and won't be upheld in subsequent cases. The problem is the juror's dismissals of other patents held by Samsung that clearly were applicable. The only thing that makes this broken patent system remotely tolerable is a fiction of fairness. If we allow the jury to discard even this in punitive fashion, then things are worse than we realized. P.S., sorry for the first garbled iteration of this post. I'm still dialing in SwiftKey for tablets.
- debacle 14y ago
  The other juror's statements make it clear that there was confusion on the jury, and instead of asking the judge (as jurors are supposed to do), they relied on the foreman's personal experiences.
pja 14y ago
Making assertions about patent law that are objectively false would surely be over that line too. Questions of law are for the judge, questions of guilt or innocence are for the jury. Isn't that the rule?

lnanek2 14y ago

This article is a continuation of many the site has posted. In previous articles they have gone on in detail about how the foreman ignored jury instructions. He invalidated prior art because the code wouldn't run on the iPhone processor, for example, and he said they calculated damages to send a message to Samsung and the industry as a whole. These things are both directly counter to the jury instructions, which do not require prior art to be binary compatible and state damages should only basically fix the amount of money lost by the other company, not be extreme to make a point. Here's one of the articles: http://www.groklaw.net/articlebasic.php?story=20120828225612963 http://www.groklaw.net/articlebasic.php?story=20120828225612... If the guy had that previous experience, but he followed the instructions, I don't think people would have complained. But instead he ignored instructions and took things into his own hands based on his incorrect perceptions of patent law he formed from his past experiences.

twoodfin 14y ago
I don't want to re-litigate all this, but her argument puts an awful lot of weight on 15 seconds of the foreman speaking extemporaneously during a TV interview. I don't think it's outrageous to believe that when he said "processor" he was referring to the two devices broadly, and that he reads the '381 patent as applying to a different kind of system than the DiamondTouch. Even she specifies that the Apple patent covered "portable multifunction devices", which the DiamondTouch manifestly is not. Again, I'm not arguing that the prior art is or isn't sufficient to throw out the patent. I'm only arguing that it's not a slam dunk that this juror "took things into his own hands" based on a few vague comments about their deliberations.
- potatolicious 14y ago
  I don't think anyone here is ready to tar and feather the jury foreman here - but the fact that the interviews were given, and based on interviews with other jurors, it certainly seems suspicious. And considering $1bn is on the line, I don't think it's too much to ask that we investigate this.