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Judge Makes Lawyers Pay For Frivolous Patent Suit
Gallenod writes "The Denver Post is reporting that the U.S. 10th Circuit Court of Appeals has upheld the decision of a Federal judge who threw out and reversed a jury decision in favor of a patent infringement claim and ordered the plaintiff's lawyers to pay the defendants' court costs. U.S. District Senior Judge Richard P. Matsch sanctioned the plaintiff's attorneys for 'cavalier and abusive' misconduct and for having a 'what can I get away with?' attitude during a 13-day patent infringement trial in Denver. With the Appeals Court in agreement, could this case be the 'shot heard round the world' in the revolution against patent trolls?"
I never thought this one would stand up to appeal...The judge threw out the jury verdict and then made the plaintiff pay the court costs. Read that again: he threw out the jury verdict.
And the appeals court backed him up! Holy crap! I guess that's one way to deal with stupid juries and slick lawyers...Get some decent judges who aren't willing to put up with the crap.
ad logicam Claiming a proposition is false because it was presented as the conclusion of a fallacious argument.
Is that you? We've missed you!
And the masses cried out, "09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0!"
Judges have broad authority to set aside or nullify a jury verdict. Usually called "judgement non obstante veredicto", or judgement notwithstanding the verdict. If the judge strongly believes the jury got the facts and/or the applicable law very badly wrong, a jnov can be entered. It's unusual, as juries are accorded very strong cred as the triers of fact.
Law is a slow beast to change, by design. Technology will advance much faster then Law. As a result, we'll continue to see issues like the one we face with "patent infringement". But, Law does eventually change to correct itself. I'm relieved to see that things are working as they should.
How is that the same? The small label wouldn't be "patent trolling" since they would have a legitimate claim. They also wouldn't be displaying a let's see what we can get away with attitude. The judge made the kind of impartial corrective action they are supposed to make. If anything, this sets precedent for less frivolous lawsuits.
However this guy has done some cool things, like halting clean dvd edits, he was involved in the McViegh trail and even the Kobe Bryant trial among other things .
I'm sick of following my dreams. I'm just going to ask where they're goin' and hook up with 'em later.
The exact opposite is what happened here; a bunch of slick, highly paid lawyers smooth-talked the jury, and then the judge tossed the jury verdict and stuck the plaintiff with the costs for their litigation.
This kind of thing is most common when the lawyers get out of control...If the judge decides that the lawyers are running amok, they can throw the whole thing out and charge them with contempt or whatever. There is some precedent in also tossing cases where the juries decision contravenes the material facts of the case, but that's a much greyer area, though it has been upheld more often than not.
ad logicam Claiming a proposition is false because it was presented as the conclusion of a fallacious argument.
It's significant because typically the lawyers aren't the ones paying the opposing team's costs. Usually, the lawyers always win every trial, because they get paid no matter what. If you punish the lawyers themselves for going ahead with cases they know are frivolous, then you'll start to see far, far fewer lawyers taking frivolous cases.
-Peter
Why you make fun of article? Hulk work hard on article! Not easy. Many long words. Hulk hands big, computer keys tiny!
Now, where's my violin?
Ibid.
For example, I like the Matrix trilogy, but there is a completely unnecessary sex scene in the second movie. Is it your intent to force all who would wish to watch the movie to view that scene? Even "fast forwarding" still gives you glimpses, interrupts the flow of the movie, and requires either good timing or a quick backtrack-rewind to resume the movie after the scene. This sort of things is one of the things that I wanted the Blu-ray and HD-DVDs to provide. Basically the content would still be there, but people that didn't want to view it could change a setting and those things would be skipped. Kind of like a V-Chip, but far less likely to make mistakes. Bonus points if there were a way for individuals to create their own cut points to avoid things they're uncomfortable with. I've got a few things myself that I don't want to see in movies.
It really does seem like a fair compromise, people that don't want to view the material would have an easy way of avoiding it, and the people that do could do so. It would also make it quite a bit easier to separate out the "please, won't somebody, think of the children" crowd from the people that just don't want their own kids watching it.
If they really wanted to buff up the bottom line, they could probably make a feature which would do the opposite, skip all the wholesome stuff and get straight to the T&A and B&G.
Ummm... the fact that Clean/Family flix - who held no rights in the movies they were redistributing - was redistributing copyrighted material for money in direct violation of the copyright holders' rights?
If you find the content morally objectionable, how is it more moral to buy an edited version from someone who has no right to sell it? It seems to me that the best thing you can do is vote with your wallet and not buy it.
And if that is too extreme for your tests, I respectfully suggest that you don't see that content as nearly so "objectionable" as you make it out to be.
Wouldn't they be better off releasing a clean version of the movie themselves, and keep the profit? But since they refuse to do this, then I do not think that there is anything wrong with editing a movie to clean it up. Yes, I'm sure they would. But that's their choice -- and they're under no obligation to give away their work for another company to profit off of, if they choose not to do it. Prohibiting the editing of movies altogether is not the answer.The courts prohibited only using copyrighted material without permissions, which is after all what copyright is for. Whether the owner of the copyright wishes to allow a company to PAY for the rights to do what Clean Flix wanted to do is entirely up to the owner(s). The court is quite correct in stating that it has no say in it.