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Technology Stocks : Interdigital Communication(IDCC) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Ilaine who wrote (3800)	2/9/2000 1:35:00 PM
From: Gus	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 5195

This only goes to prove how crazy it is to have juries deciding patents Many consider Markman as a step in the right direction because the Supreme Court finally made a clear distinction that claim construction is a question of law to be decided by the judge so the jury can focus on the facts and the question of infringement. Otherwise, the kind of pitched-fork battles with dictionaries and thesauri over a word, a term or a phrase as reflected in the IDC brief would most certainly confound any jury. The situation is probably different around the world where there are officially 179 patent jurisdictions. Others can probably fill you in on the system in Germany and Sweden where IDC managed to have its patents revalidated or upheld. I still remember the 1997 Ampex vs Mitsubishi court case over picture-in-picture technology which went to trial when the Markman hearing requirement was still fresh. Ampex won the jury verdict ($8 million), but Mitsubishi managed to turn one conflicting answer in the jury questionnaire into a question of law that resulted in the judge reversing the jury verdict. It just goes to show you how unpredictable these patent cases can get. Thanks for sharing your observations (and admitting that you're a lawyer:-).