East Texas jury nails Apple with $625 million patent infringement verdict

[TexasTowelie]

Read more: http://democratsforever.freeforums.net/thread/2344/east-texas-nails-apple-patent

[PoliticAverse]

1. Why "East Texas"? See...

http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2013/01/east-texas-courts-are-back-on-top-for-patent-lawsuits/

[CincyDem]

2. Headline should read "Jury in Louie Gohmert's district rewards Patent Troll with $625 million "

Did Apple infringe - maybe, maybe not. But the headline doesn't reflect the case.

In this case, we have a Nevada based firm who buys patents by the thousands at fire sale prices in bankruptcies without even reading them. They flood the courts with filings against every company that does business in the field. I don't know the specifics of this one but some of these cases are nuts - there was one where a firm like this claimed to have invented "...a device to communicate with other 'like devices' that had a numeric keypad and did not have to be connect via a wire". With that in hand, they sued every cell phone manufacturer in the world. I'm sure they got paid a fair amount of "go away" money.

Firms like this also "venue shop", looking for a court that will be skewed to their favor, usually landing in a court with a jury pool that is less likely to understand the nuances of the case. In this case, they ended up in in East Texas. I'm sure the jurisdiction question is addressed by the sale of Apple products in that area. By that logic, they could have picked any court in the country and it's an interesting coincidence that they ended up in the same neighborhood that sends the most f'ing insane rep to congress year after year. (in fact, Tyler Tx is his home town). Just on the surface, the odds of getting a "less likely to understand the nuances" jury is probably pretty high in Tyler. Not everyone - just the odds favor it.

Doesn't mean everyone in Tyler (or the District) is a whack but it does mean that a majority of those who choose to participate in the voting process (and maybe the jury process)..those people...they're whacks.

It's worth noting that Apple isn't contesting the infringement question and they spent years negotiating with the plaintiff who, in their opinion, just want too much money for their invention. Of course they're not going to settle because their basic business model is turn the court system into their own private Las Vegas - lots of nickels and dimes into the judicial slot machine with a hope of getting easy payments from firms who just want to avoid the legal fees and, every once in a while, hitting the big payoff.

This is the second round for this case - the first awarding the company 325mill (or something like that). Court of Appeals said "too much - find a new number". That was 6 years ago. The 625 will go to appeal too and, given that there was trivial reduction in the award, they'll bounce this one too.

A great example of why we need tort reform.

[TexasTowelie]

3. It's no surprise to me about East Texas juries.

I was the lead statistical analyst on tort reform with the Department of Insurance during the late 80s and throughout the 90s so I'm very familiar with venue shopping in the state. There are about a half dozen other counties where excessive jury verdicts are frequent occurrences.

[CincyDem]

4. That must have been an eye-opening job.

I'm often conflicted in these big insurance payouts. What's the "right" balance between incentivizing companies to not do stupid stuff and rewarding the injured to trivial stuff.

Not sure if it's true but I recently read something about the McDonald's million dollar hot cup of coffee. IIRC, some woman got a million bucks because her coffee was too hot. On the surface, sounds like a great example of trivial payout. On closer inspection, however, it appears that an uninsured 79-year old woman received second degree burns in her hip/genital area that required skin grafts. Her hospital bills (rightly or wrongly) were upwards of 400k. She got some pain and suffering as she lost her mobility to some atrophy during her recovery - she was laid up and never really got back on her feet. Turns out some guy at the McD's had just recently upped the water temp on the coffee maker to boiling minus a tenth of a degree so that they could hold it longer in the morning before it fell below their acceptable serving temp. This lady got the first cup out of the almost boiling pot.

I don't know. On the surface - wrong reward. In the details - feels like a low reward for, in effect, taking her life away to hold a pot of coffee a little longer.

Based on experience, if you're willing, what's you take on this. Where's the balance ?

[TexasTowelie]

6. My job experience was with bodily injury claims so it does differ from this case which is a patent

lawsuit.

When it involves bodily injury claims then I tend to favor the injured party in most instances. My view is that when cap limits were applied to damages it transfers the cost of taking care of the injured party away from the corporations that were either liable or negligent back to the general public. I don't think that it is appropriate for the taxpayers to subsidize a for-profit entity.

When the defendant is a public entity such as a municipality then I do realize the need for capping jury awards since I did see some cases where the injured party effectively won the lottery and the amount of compensation was excessive. On the other hand, it probably amounts to an even wash between collecting a settlement or being forced into some other form of social assistance. It does certainly put the person that has been injured into a weaker position and more stress by being limited under tort law.

When it involves corporate entities as both the plaintiff and the defendant then I don't have much sympathy whatsoever. I'm simply apathetic as to which party has a better profit in 99% of the cases.

FWIW, I was probably the most liberal and conscientious of the effects on social policy when changes in tort law were being considered. My colleagues tended to be pro-insurance industry and concerned about their profit margins than I ever was.

[Lee-Lee]

5. It's the same kind of lawsuit trolling that sets up message boards to be sued

You know why you can't cut and paste a whole news story on boards like this anymore? Lawsuit trolls buy the rights to archives of newspapers and then search for anyone who has cut and pasted the story and sue.

Same mindset.