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Great news. I was surprised to read that in a way similar to the Apple case against Samsung, the judge (in the Apple case, it was the foreman) told the jury to

Great news. I was surprised to read that in a way similar to the Apple case against Samsung, the judge (in the Apple case, it was the foreman) told the jury to completely ignore the validity of the patents in District Court. It still makes absolutely no sense to me, so if someone could fill me in I would appreciate it. I read that the judge said jurors would be confused... is this normal in any other type of case? Not a satisfying explanation.

shmerl 14y ago
That logic is indeed bizarre. If jurors are confused with what they judge about, they should be simply disqualified from the start.
unavoidable 14y ago
No, I think you may be confusing some things here. Sometimes judges give juries instructions to ignore a particular part of a case when making findings for another part of the case. This makes it easier to rule on a case when it goes to appeal. For a patent trial, often the judge will instruct the juries to consider the issue of infringement alone, assuming that the underlying patents are valid, and then consider the validity question separately. So on appeal, the appellate court can overturn a specific finding (i.e. one of the underlying claims are invalid) but not overrule the overall finding (i.e. the infringement finding is still valid because they found that if certain other claims were valid then the defendant did infringe). This is obviously more complicated in practice because juries are supposed to only decide issues of fact and not issues of law - but in some cases it's difficult to say exactly what is law and what is fact. This is especially so in patent law, where the actual letters patent are supposed to be interpreted in light of the relevant patent legislation, and often turns on interpretation of words (which are questions of law). This is, by the way, why patent trolls like jury trials. It's easy to bog down processes in these trials and confuse the jury. As for the Samsumg case, that's complicated by a generally ignorant foreman who seems to have convinced fellow jurors that his interpretation of the law was correct.
bjhoops1 14y ago
Judge: "Let's start with the assumption that O.J. did in fact murder his wife. Now the question for the jury is how badly did he murder her?"

shmerl 14y ago

That logic is indeed bizarre. If jurors are confused with what they judge about, they should be simply disqualified from the start.

unavoidable 14y ago

No, I think you may be confusing some things here. Sometimes judges give juries instructions to ignore a particular part of a case when making findings for another part of the case. This makes it easier to rule on a case when it goes to appeal. For a patent trial, often the judge will instruct the juries to consider the issue of infringement alone, assuming that the underlying patents are valid, and then consider the validity question separately. So on appeal, the appellate court can overturn a specific finding (i.e. one of the underlying claims are invalid) but not overrule the overall finding (i.e. the infringement finding is still valid because they found that if certain other claims were valid then the defendant did infringe). This is obviously more complicated in practice because juries are supposed to only decide issues of fact and not issues of law - but in some cases it's difficult to say exactly what is law and what is fact. This is especially so in patent law, where the actual letters patent are supposed to be interpreted in light of the relevant patent legislation, and often turns on interpretation of words (which are questions of law). This is, by the way, why patent trolls like jury trials. It's easy to bog down processes in these trials and confuse the jury. As for the Samsumg case, that's complicated by a generally ignorant foreman who seems to have convinced fellow jurors that his interpretation of the law was correct.

bjhoops1 14y ago

Judge: "Let's start with the assumption that O.J. did in fact murder his wife. Now the question for the jury is how badly did he murder her?"