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Judge Tosses Jury's $533M Patent Verdict Against Apple, Orders New Trial
An anonymous reader writes: US District Judge Rodney Gilstrap has thrown out a $532.9 million damages award against Apple after a jury found that its iTunes software infringed three patents owned by a Texas company. Gilstrap ruled (pdf) that the damages verdict must be thrown out because of faulty jury instructions and has ordered a new trial to be held solely on the issue of damages.
As any that read past the inflammatory headline will know the judge did not throw out the verdict. The ruling of patent infringement still stands.
As such, the case is being sent back to the lower court solely to rehear the damages portion, i.e.not further argument about whether or not infringement occurred will be considered there.
How east Texas became the epicenter for 'patent troll' lawsuits
Company with no product wins $533M verdict vs. Apple, says it’s no “patent troll”
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That article deserves its Slashdot summary, independent of the Apple story.
The Federal Eastern District is wildly corrupt. From the Newegg filing:
Further evidencing the unreasonableness of the delay in Newegg’s case is the most recent Civil Justice Reform Act (“CJRA”) Report for Judge Gilstrap,
which indicates that as of September 30, 2014, Judge Gilstrap had only a single civil case pending for more than three years, and that he had no motions pending
for more than six months.
That's from Newegg's argumentation that the 20 month delay is ridiculous. What they tacked on in the footnotes is fascinating:
Curiously, although TQP’s case against Newegg (filed May 6, 2011) had been pending for more than three years, and although Newegg’s JMOL motion (filed February 17, 2014) had been pending more than six months at that time, neither the case nor the motion were listed in Judge Gilstrap’s September 2014 CJRA Report.
Gilstrap wants to punish Newegg for daring to go to trial at all over the patent lawsuit, and further for daring to be right when they proved they weren't infringing, and finally for making a mockery of the idiot east Texas jury that found infringement and awarded millions for it, completely in contradiction to the law, other case law, and the plain reading of the text of the patent. And he wants to get away with it by hiding it from the CJRA Report. And he's doing it.
In other words, a law was passed by Congress to evaluate the performance of judges, specifically to catch malpractice like this, and he got a fraudulent report created that hides his misbehavior.
Newegg has the discretion to call that "curious." The rest of us call it criminal. Impeach the bastard.