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Why Juries Have No Place In the Patent System
New submitter Isara writes "GigaOm's Jeff John Roberts has a compelling writeup about patent trials and how juries are detrimental to justice in such cases. Roberts uses the recent Apple-Samsung trial as the backdrop for his article; although the trial lasted three weeks, during which hundreds of documents were presented and the finer points of U.S. patent law were discussed, the jury only took 2-3 days to deliberate. 'Patents are as complex as other industrial policies like subsidies or regulatory regimes. When disputes arise, they should be put before an expert tribunal rather than a jury that is easily swayed by schoolyard "copycat" narratives.'"
The problem is, that the jury admitted to skipping entire parts of the case and just awarding apple money. Not just that, but some features that apple has patented were not even apple innovations. So whether Samsung did copy or not, Apple was awarded money for things it copied. It isn't the fact that people are pro Samsung or pro Apple, it is that Apple was awarded a giant sum of money due to a broken system and an uneducated jury when it comes to patents.
Challenge accepted.
/shrug I think patents have their place, but I can't fathom a reason why a company would need more than a decade of locked-in profits after a product is released to market. I can maybe see the case for the very, very expensive and time consuming process of drug manufacturing, but in those types of special cases, shouldn't the patent be proportionate to the time invested, and not a broad "You just won the cancer game for the next 63 years!" certificate?
http://www.researchoninnovation.org/WordPress/?p=9
http://archive.mises.org/7880/patents-and-innovation/
http://archive.mises.org/10217/yet-another-study-finds-patents-do-not-encourage-innovation/
http://keithsawyer.wordpress.com/2008/10/31/do-patents-increase-innovation/
I didn't really even cherry pick; I just did a Google search for "innovation in countries without patent laws" and a whole slew of studies came up.
It appears that many of the studies have shown that heavy patents don't necessarily increase innovation, but rather direct the types of innovations that are made within an industry (perhaps: innovate for a long term lock-in, not for shorter term or wide-spread improvements).
The advantage in the UK of course is a specialized Patent Court with Judges and no juries. These Judges are patent specialists spending their time only looking at Patent cases. They are a very sharp bunch. I recall one incident in which the Judge suspended a complex case so he could go and learn some pretty high level biochemistry from the head of biochemistry at Cambridge.
In fact, the judge had to have the jury correct their verdict since, in at least 2 cases, they decided to award Apple damages even after they said that Samsung didn't infringe in that instance.
My sci-fi novel, Ghost Thief, is now available from Amazon.com.
How could one person force 11 other people to vote his way? And what "send a message" are you talking about? A message about what?
Or in the Apple-Samsung case, simply by claiming to be an expert on patents, prior art AND jury duty because he filed a patent himself and was on juries three times already.
Also, there were NINE jurors, not twelve.
As for sending the message... Well, besides the "Velvin Hogan is Batman" (4th jury duty? What is he, a professional juror?) there's that literal quote of his...
"We wanted to make sure the message we sent was not just a slap on the wrist," Hogan said. "We wanted to make sure it was sufficiently high to be painful, but not unreasonable."
Which is kind of an issue, since that is EXACTLY what the jury was instructed NOT to do.
There. Now you know.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens