In the 6-3 ABC v. Aereo decision, the Supreme Court made a mess of copyright law and sowed uncertainty for technology companies by trying to plug a loophole. As Justice Scalia put it in his dissent, the Court put in place "an improvised standard (‘looks-like-cable-TV’) that will sow confusion for years to come." This post presents an annotated e-brief style version of the opinion with my notes.
Civil jurors in a Los Angeles court are using special iPads to review admitted trial exhibits during the trial. As I observed in a KPCC interview about iPads in court, I expect to see more iPads in coming years in the hands of judges, attorneys and jurors. The iPad is a great, easy-to-use tool for presenting and consuming content (which is exactly what happens in courts). This post includes a demonstration of a custom-made iPad app made to illustrate a patent.
My partner, Morgan Smith, has written many posts about iPads, and their advantages for attorneys. The iPad allows an attorney to easily control a slide presentation projected onto a courtroom screen for the judge or jury. Using an app such as TrialPad or Trial Director for iPad allows an attorney to present documents, deposition video and other evidence on the screen.
At the 2014 annual meeting of the San Francisco Intellectual Property Law Association, SFIPLA, a panel of judges shared their experiences and reflections on what works and what doesn't work in a courtroom, and how to connect with juries and judges in patent trials and hearings.
Litigation would be much easier if you could work on just one case at a time, and if each case moved quickly to a conclusion. Unfortunately, litigators don't have that luxury. Litigators need to jump from case to case, putting out fires in one, then jumping to the next. Because litigation can span years, litigators often need to return to information and analysis done weeks, months or even years ago.
In years of litigating big, complicated cases with these challenges, I've used a number of tricks to put key information and documents a couple of clicks away. In today's blog post, I'll share a few of those tips in the context of a patent case (for non-patent litigators, you may still find some of these tips of value).
This post provides an annotated version of the Apple v. Samsung iPhone patent decision. These annotations are like those we use in an e-brief / ebrief. The post provides a video showing how to do the bookmarking annotations.
Good litigation graphics convey a message quickly and clearly. The example animation in today’s post supports an argument that plaintiff’s claim for a “reasonable royalty” in a patent case was unreasonable because the claim equaled the full value of the defendant company at the time of the “hypothetical negotiation” back in 2008. Here is a short (18-second) version of the animation with audio of […]
Good animations can make difficult patent language and complicated patent diagrams come to life. An animation can make a bored judge or juror wake up, pay attention and engage with your argument. For example, in defending a patent case, animating the simple and limited scope of what is actually described in the patents can be very important. Thus, an animation […]
“I need a timeline.” This is how litigators often start in asking for legal graphics. This start to the graphics conversation makes sense because timelines are perhaps the most common type of legal graphic, and the most familiar to many litigators. This starting point also makes sense in light of a litigator’s goal—a litigator needs […]
Our firm recently worked on a patent case between two Internet software companies that required illustration of the various inner workings of the Internet. While most people use the Internet on a regular (if not constant) basis, far fewer actually know what goes on “behind the scenes,” so to speak. What actually happens when you […]
