On Nov 20, 2010, at 6:37 15AM, James A. Donald wrote:
> On 2010-11-20 8:03 PM, Adam Back wrote:
>> In an attempt to reduce this patent revolt among the technical people, they
>> shipped in a patent attorney expert guy to give us a talk on patents.
>> Apparently the test for "novelty" is so poor as to make you cry. > So while
>> I don't think the legal people are morons, ...
>
> Patent lawyers are quite smart and knowledgeable. But there is no such thing
> as a patent judge or a patent jury and never has been. They are just regular
> judges judging matters in which they have no relevant expertise, and it
> shows. BPAI judges are supposed to have relevant expertise, but they don't,
> and even if they did, when you are accused of infringing a patent, you don't
> go before a BPAI judge.
Let me repeat a previous question: do you have *any* first-hand experience with
patent litigation? There are a fair number of people on this list who have
such experience. There is at least one attorney on this list (who hasn't
posted publicly). Might I *strongly* suggest that people confine their
assertions of fact to things that they've experienced, rather than read on a
blog or mailing list somewhere?
As for your specific question: opposing counsel can deal with such issues with
good questioning, either during a deposition or during cross-examination on the
stand. If you get the opposing expert contradicting him or herself in front of
the jury, or unable to explain to the jury the bad answers in a (videotaped)
deposition, the jury will come to the proper conclusions.
--Steve Bellovin, http://www.cs.columbia.edu/~smb
_______________________________________________
cryptography mailing list
[email protected]
http://lists.randombit.net/mailman/listinfo/cryptography
