Illinois Trial Practice Weblog

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Here are several posts related to IP litigation that are worth a read:
Anne Reed at Deliberations has a fascinating post discussing a study about the differences between city and suburban or rural juries — click here to read it. The study is focused on criminal cases, but it has value for civil juries as well. It is no surprise to anyone involved in trials across the country that city jurors act differently than suburban or rural jurors. But the real message of Reed’s post is that you have to be careful to draw overly strong conclusions about one factor (juror’s home addresses) from a study of a massive, complex system like a trial. The outcomes are also dependent upon the sophistication of the court as to the subject matter and type of law of the case, the volume of the court’s docket, etc. And there might be more important ways to classify jurors. For example, relative wealth and level of education may be more important factors than where they live. But Reed points out that the real value of the study for lawyers, consultants and litigants is that it makes us think about how juries are influenced and challenges our preconceived notions. Reed challenges us to Reed the study and use it as a springboard, instead of as an answer.
At his The Prior Art blog, Joe Mullin has an update on Scott Harris and his patent portfolio, after his settlement with his former firm, Fish & Richardson — click here for the post. Harris and Memory Control Enterprise recently filed a patent infringement suit in the Northern District involving GPS navigation technology. I will post about those cases as opinions and orders are issued.
Here is a useful white paper on taking cross-cultural depositions from the All Language Alliance. Hat tip to Evan Schaeffer at his Illinois Trial Practice Weblog for the link in a post about depositions using interpreters.
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Continue Reading IP Litigation News

Last week’s Olympic edition Blawg Review focused on the medals. Building on that, this week I discuss the elements of a world record swim. If you were watching last week, instead of blogging, you saw 20 of them in the Olympic pool; seven by Mr. Phelps.
Practice
Nothing is more critical than preparation. A big part of preparation is tightening your stroke and cutting out unnecessary motion. Reese Morrison, at the Law Department Management blog, discusses blunt suggestions for trimming legal bills.
Endless hours in the pool alone are not enough, you need a good coach. Business development coach Cordell Parvin provides an excellent three part series at his Law Consulting Blog – one, two, and three – on persistence, an important element of any Olympic training program. In an Olympic caliber display of persistence, Drug & Device Law had an exhaustive post discussing and classifying each medical device preemption case since the landmark Supreme Court decision in Riegel v. Medtronic, Inc., 128 S. Ct. 999 (2008).
You also need a support network to help you get through all of the pool time. Bruce Allen, at Marketing Catalyst, teaches us how to avoid the cocktail conversation you cannot escape from at a networking event. At Copyblogger, John Morrow explains that content is no longer king in the blogosphere, you need friends. And he teaches you how to get them. At BlawgIT, Brett Trout – who is a fighter, not a swimmer – has an interesting post about how to work together as a community to thwart webjackings (the hijacking of a website). And Mediation Channel’s Diane Levin discusses the social side of blogging, and reading blogs.
Of course, if you do not have time to practice you will never set the record. So, you need a job, or at least some cash. On that note, Harmful Error posts the great news that loan forgiveness programs were expanded this week for legal aid lawyers, state prosecutors and public defenders.
The Suit
The clothes make the man (or the woman). This year the go-to duds were Speedo’s LZR suits. Patent Librarian Michael White tells us that, no surprise, Speedo patented the LZR. IPKat expands on swimming patents, providing a broader view of Olympics-related patents.
Genes
As a guy who swam for a lot of years and practiced hard throughout, I can tell you not everyone has what it takes to set world records. The closest I came was getting beat by an Olympian and world record holder. Of course, you might be less impressed by my loss if you knew that at the time his Olympic medals were four or five decades old, and I was 19. At Idealawg, Stephanie West Allen discusses the traits that make entrepreneurs entrepreneurial.
Mental Focus
One of the big stories on Phelps this week was how he thinks of nothing but not losing during a race. At Litigation & Trial, Maxwell Kennerly tells us that you have to know when you are sweating the details more than your client would want by over emphasizing proof-reading. Of course, even Kennerly agrees that some details matter.
Knowing the Rules
You have to know the rules. Turn wrong or break the rules for your stroke and beating a record by ten seconds will not matter. At the Legal Juice, John Mesirow reports that kids at the Lake County Florida library are allowed to rent R-rated movies because they believe it is an unconstitutional delegation of authority for the Motion Picture Association of America’s guidelines for determining obscenity. I am sure kids from all over that area are flocking to the Lake County library because the rules are on their side, at least for now.
Filewrapper reports on a Federal Circuit decision holding that copyright infringement, and not just breach of contract, when the terms of an open source license governing the copyrighted material are breached. For more on this major decision in the IP world, check out: BLT; Law Pundit; and Patently-O.
Seattle Trademark Lawyer Mike Graham shows the consequences of not following the rules using two Western District of Washington opinions.
Ethan Lieb, guest blogging at Freakonomics, argues that we need to change the rules requiring unanimous juries. And the WSJ Law Blog discusses a judge and a juror who clashed over jury nullification.
The Start
A bad start is hard to recover from, especially when you are chasing the fastest time ever. Evan Schaeffer shows how to open well at trial at the Illinois Trial Practice Weblog, and he links to Trial Theatre’s opening statement quiz.
Turns
Coming off the wall in a turn is the fastest a swimmer goes during a race. So, you need good turns. IntLawGrrls discuss how to turn around the conflict between Georgia and Russia (sorry the turns section was tough).
Legal Literacy discusses Whole Foods’ turned around (or recalled) beef and looks behind the scenes at how it happened and Whole Foods’ impressively quick response.
The Finish
Do you do an extra stroke or do you glide in hard? Always a tough question, but the .01 seconds the decision costs you can mean the race and the record.
At his E.D. Texas Weblog, Michael Smith reports that while the E.D. Texas started out as a rocket docket, particularly for patents, it has now slowed down and let many other districts catch it with a time to trial of 24 – 30 months.
The Law and Magic Blog reminds us that we cannot always win, and that trying to rig the system to guarantee wins – he is talking about the stock market, but it holds true for the pool – is dangerous work.
At the IP ADR Blog, Victoria Pynchon praises several Perkins Coie attorneys who went the distance for their pro bono clients at Gitmo and earned the clients’ respect for providing them an able defense.
** Images provided via a Creative Commons license by A. Dawson or Andre from Flicker. **
Next week’s Blawg Review will be at fellow LexBlog site, the Texas Appellate Law Blog.
Blawg Review has information about next week’s host, and instructions on how to get your blawg posts reviewed in upcoming issues.
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Continue Reading Blawg Review #173

Funny Cide Ventures, LLC v. Miami Herald Publishing Co., No. 4D06-2347, Slip Op. (Fla. 4th Dist. May 16, 2007).
Funny Cide Ventures is not a Northern District opinion, nor is it about intellectual property, but it is worth reading. In a two-page per curiam opinion, the appellate panel dismissed Funny Cide Venture’s (“FCV”) claims of injurious falsehood against defendants the Miami Herald and Knight-Ridder. FCV’s horse Funny Cide won the Kentucky Derby in 2003. After the race, the Miami Herald falsely reported that Funny Cide’s jockey admitted carrying something during the race and implied that the jockey had cheated by carrying an illegal, battery-operated device perhaps to shock Funny Cide. Funny Cide and his jockey went on to win the Preakness Stakes with a substantial lead over the field, completing two-thirds of the Triple Crown. But they lost the final race at Belmont and, with it, the Triple Crown. FCV filed suit against defendants claiming that the Miami Herald’s erroneous story caused the jockey to run Funny Cide too hard at the Preakness in an effort to prove his and Funny Cide’s superiority and, therefore, their innocence. As a result of that effort, Funny Cide lost at Belmont and, therefore, lost the revenue generated by a Triple Crown winner. The Court held that despite the “novelty and creativity” of the claims, the loss was not a direct result of defendants’ article.
While the opinion is timely (the Preakness was run last weekend), what is most interesting about it is Judge Farmer’s concurring opinion. His concurrence does not make any novel legal arguments or take issue with the substance of the per curiam decision. Instead, it leads with an argument against “dreary,” “tedious” and unnecessarily long judicial opinions.
Judge Farmer argued that some opinions should be written in alternative styles to open the law to a larger audience, and he resolved to occasionally write in other styles:
In my view nothing that is available in human experience ought to be banned by convention in judicial opinion writing.
I should state publicly my own resolution, made several months ago. I had decided that the style of some opinions could–and should– be unconventionally changed for greater openness to all readers. I would try to write some opinions in styles and tones calculated to make legal reasoning clearer for those without law degrees. Then came this case.
Judge Farmer chose this case to act upon his resolution. He wrote his opinion as though he were telling a story/writing a novel — it has a plot (at least a loose one), avoided legal-ease or citation, and it used short, decisive sentences:
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Continue Reading A Different Style of Legal Writing

The new blog Trial Lawyer Resource Center looks like it will be a great resource and it represents many of the best aspects of legal blogging — experts in a field gathering to share their insights and to engage readers in conversation.  It has no specific relation to IP, but appears to be worth reading…