

Patent issues: The jury isn't smart enough, ruled the court - creamyhorror
http://jolt.law.harvard.edu/digest/patent/uniloc-v-microsoft

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creamyhorror
This is the Uniloc-Microsoft case, in which patent troll Uniloc sued MS for
its authentication mechanism in Win XP and other products. Uniloc was awarded
$338m by a jury, but this was overturned in 2009 by the District Court of
Rhode Island, which apparently observed that:

 _The reversal may support the argument for a patent-focused court, as the
Court found that jury members were not able to sufficiently understand the
technical details and legal issues to reach a reliable verdict. There is also
concern over the obstacles presented by increasing patent litigation to high-
technology entrepreneurs and companies, which may inhibit innovation._

For once, we have a judge who stated outright that a jury was incapable of
reaching a reliable verdict because it simply didn't grasp the technical
details and legal issues involved. This is exactly what many of us have been
arguing about in discussions of the Apple-Samsung suit here on HN: some said
juries shouldn't need expertise to rule on patent cases. Others argued that
patents should be evaluated by people with expertise in the field.

It appears this judge found that this particular jury was lacking in its
ability to evaluate the case fairly. (He or she also saw the problem that
patent trolling was posing to tech innovation.) Who's to say that this
judicial opinion might not be applied to juries in other patent cases? It's a
noteworthy ruling in my book.

(Uniloc is also suing Mojang (Minecraft), EA, Square Enix, Adobe, and a host
of other companies large and small for patent infringment. See the other
thread on the Uniloc lawsuit: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4523380> )

