Patent trial themes

The trial team used the theme, and used it as themes should be used, which is to say, emphatically and repeatedly.

And it worked: The judge actually included the theme in his written decision in our favor. It turns out that some computer scientists at Cornell University have been wondering the same thing. We have been watching a lot of The Princess Bride at our house lately. Prepare to die. Particularly when confronting a mountain of evidence and a labyrinth of law, legal audiences — judges, juries, and arbitrators alike — need the guidance provided by a theme.

But it is only useful if it is sticky enough to be remembered and practical enough to be used by your decision makers. The effect of language is often mysterious, and it is hard to know what works and why. The researchers also looked at applications such as political slogans, marketing phrases, and common aphorisms, but there is also a close connection to the demands of a trial theme. Law The Practice of Law. Law Pulse Business of Law. A three-judge panel at the board handed down a quartet of final decisions Wednesday, all on petitions filed by Samsung against patents owned by Acorn Semi LLC, a Silicon Valley-based research company that claimed to have discovered "a novel and counterintuitive" way to make small microchips Stay ahead of the curve In the legal profession, information is the key to success.

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First Name Last Name. Password at least 8 characters required Confirm Password. Music has themes. Literature has themes. Most importantly, stories have themes. Themes are composed of a few words, a phrase—an easily remembered, easily repeatable statement that jurors can cling to as they strive to organize a mass of new, complicated information that is being thrown at them in a compressed period of time.

When we are constructing themes to simplify a case story for jurors, we can look to a number of sources:. When a sitting juror hears words he spoke in voir dire reiterated as a theme during trial, he will take ownership of that theme and carry it into the jury room for you. Argument is not a theme. Evidence is not a theme. An accusation is not theme, and neither is a judgment. The song also includes a good example of a melodic solo that proposes and unpacks a theme.

Specifically, I can hear four similarities. In popular culture, and to some extent in the preparation of trial lawyers, the ultimate focus is the trial. We think of that as the pinnacle moment for advocacy: in the courtroom, looking into the eyes of the judge or the jurors. According to recent estimates , civil filings end in trial in fewer than one percent of the cases, a rate that applies to both jury and bench trials.

That means that the wonderful theme you developed, along with all the other parts of your trial message, are quite likely to never see the inside of a courtroom. Does that mean that litigators facing hard limits on time, focus, and money are better advised to hold off on crafting their trial message, waiting on the very unlikely event that the case makes it all the way to trial?

Your trial message, even in the absence of the trial itself, is a critical touchstone in how your case, including its potential appeal to a future fact finder, is prepared and assessed. Your theme and related messages help to frame and represent your case to everyone who might play a role in getting it resolved: judges, mediators, experts, and the other side.

So ultimately, that message plays a key role in all of the pretrial moves that will determine whether that trial ever happens, and will determine whether your case ends on a favorable note or not. In oral argument or in front of a jury, those critical first impressions are formed quickly. A recent article draws the connection between trials and literature. Looking at opening lines from the novels Mists of Avelon, Catcher in the Rye, Peter Pan, and Middlesex , she uses them to analyze and critique opening lines from the death penalty case Brumfield v.

Cain, the marriage equality case of Obergefell v. The work leading up to trial is often hard analytical work — the kind of gradual and methodological grind in putting the pieces logically together.