That's how our justice system works. I'm glad that any citizen gets to be on a jury rather than some elite set of experts. We can't have it both ways. If given the choice between "experts" and average citizens on a jury I'd go with average citizens every time. I don't care how dumb or smart they are. What I care about is if we decide that a certain kind of person should be on certain juries then that creates a new kind of class system and would hurt us more than help. The job of the lawyers throughout the trial was to explain these things to the jury and give them the information they need to make a decision. It's fine to have a jury full of people who have no clue about the patent system because the onus is on th lawyers in the trial to present the facts. If they fail to do so on either side then they have to deal with the consequences.
It's not fair but it's equal. America's judicial system is not about fairness so much as it is equality. Equality isn't always fair but in a country like this it's the best we can do.
Now what I'm about to say isn't an attack on you but instead just am observation. When people disagree with something they always try to explain why the bad thing happened. In this case it sounds like you're looking to explain away a decision you disagree with by saying the jurors should have been experts. If the jurors were experts and someone disagreed with the ruling then inevitably someone else would be sayng they should not be experts because of bias or some such reason.
I'm glad that any citizen gets to be on a jury rather than some elite set of experts
Expert testimony is used in trial all the time and is given great weight by jurors. Experts parse out highly technical details and draw conclusions to help the jury. Now, I'm not disagreeing with your initial assertion, but am pointing out that our justice system depends mightily on technical and professional elites.
The problem with this case is that a set of very complex and technical questions (did one or more patent infringements occur?) are being decided by non-experts. Having a lay jury decide these questions is as absurd as having the jury determine the caliber of gun used in a murder. Technical questions require expert/elite knowledge to untangle.
I comppletely agree but my point was that since we can't have it both ways, a jury comprised of average citizens is preferable to a jury of elites no matter the profession or industry. I'm sure an expert jury would have made a far better decision but I'm in favor of the lesser of the two evils.
It can be (and is) extremely dangerous at times. Leave the billion dollar aside for some time. It can kill an innocent and set a culprit free, if that's the valid rationale of yours.
I suspect expert testimony in jury trials will be less effective in American jury trials as anti-intellectualism continues its rise there. In Japan with lay judges now we see the opposite problem as the lay judges mostly just decide the case in whatever way the expert judge prefers.
That's how our justice system works. I'm glad that any citizen gets to be on a jury rather than some elite set of experts. We can't have it both ways. If given the choice between "experts" and average citizens on a jury I'd go with average citizens every time. I don't care how dumb or smart they are. What I care about is if we decide that a certain kind of person should be on certain juries then that creates a new kind of class system and would hurt us more than help.
You could apply the same argument to any other kind of task. "If we decide that a certain kind of person should perform certain surgeries then that creates a new kind of class system and would hurt us more than help." So, if jury trials are a good thing, that's not for the reason you gave, since you obviously wouldn't want random people to perform heart surgeries or design bridges.
I don't know that the current system does much for equality either. For example, back when I used to read reddit there were a lot of stories about how black people are disproportionately likely to be convicted of crimes in the U.S. So if that's true, you can't help but wonder, maybe trained experts could be trained to be more color-blind than an average citizen.
Have you seen the movie "Twelve angry men"? It becomes much less uplifting once you realize that in the real life it will be just like that except there may be no Henry Fonda in the room.
You can't train someone to be impartial. There are problems with the juries and the court system but specially selecting juries isn't going to solve it. Jurors are supposd to be impartial and if this case had an expert jury they'd bring with them their own experiences with the patent system both positive and negative. So I'm a developer. Suppose I get called into jury duty and it's a case of some company suing a developer for checking an email account they set up for a client and the prosecution is arguing that the developer was in the wrong for doing so without permission. And let's say the reason for doing this was to verify that some transactional email accounts were working or to click an activation link for some peripheral service. Yeah, it's a way out there weird example but try not to get hung up on the details and stay with me on the bigger picture. As an expert juror I'm inclined to side with the defendant because I know how frustrating it is to work with clueless people and wait forever to get things done and I've created email addresses for people before and gone in there real quick for the exact same reason. Objectively what was done was wrong but in my mind it's justified. So I side with the defendant, persuade the other jurors and get the guy off the hook. The point is that experts are arguably more biased than anyone. A doctor being sued for malpractice with an all doctor jury will have lots of friends on the jury who will probably side with him having most likely feared or dealt with malpractice suits their whole career. That's why I like the idea of lay people getting the facts from expert testimony. You also can't train people to be color blind. If I told you not to notice someone's skin color it would just draw attention to it. Once something has been said or seen it cannot be unheard or unseen. America is a racist country, most jurors are white and middle class, and that's why you see more blacks being convicted than whites.
It's a messy issue with no perfect solution so non-experts are the best solution so far.
if this case had an expert jury they'd bring with them their own experiences with the patent system both positive and negative
How come? In a case where it's important to know whether a patent was infringed upon or not (call it a technical thingie happened or not) it's very important that the very facts and formulas behind this were needed to be carefully understood by people who gave the verdict(I am not aware of the USA jury system other than explained by Hollywood).
Atleast they could have seen what a patent farce war it was. Now all they might have done was "Oh yeah.. looks like Samsung copied Apple.."..another "..yeah..seems like that..hmm you are right".. "a billion dollar will be fine..no?".. "yeah...that's perfect.. let them pay a billion dollar".. or whatever happens inside there.
It's not fair but it's equal. America's judicial system is not about fairness so much as it is equality
Experts cannot be enhanced by the uninformed, but the uninformed can be enhanced by experts. When you average proficiency and incompetence, you end up with incompetence.
"It's fine to have a jury full of people who have no clue about the patent system because the onus is on th lawyers in the trial to present the facts. If they fail to do so on either side then they have to deal with the consequences."
Except that once one lawyer screws up, the legal precedent is set, and the rest of the people down the line get screwed too.
Honestly I do think that Samsung is guilty of copying Apple, so I'm not trying to explain it away. The fact that the jury determined the percentage is probably the part that peeved me the most. The numbers are so clearly based on anchoring (Samsung said 12%, Apple said 35%...) there's no way its accurate.
Honestly I do think that Samsung is guilty of copying Apple
You think? How? I mean what could have been another design? Like pulling a tail from the right bottom of the handset, or left? Or top? Or adding two horns on top? Or a big hole somewhere to distinguish.
Glad no one patented pants and shirts or undies. Or someone has done even that?
Some of the cartoonists who followed the trial and posted were more accurate in putting the farce of display.
So it looks like it's not good to have a jury decide and it's not good to have experts decide on the validity of a patents. Maybe it's that the idea of patents is flawed and the flaw manifests itself as a lack of a good way to determine if a patent is valid.
It's not fair but it's equal. America's judicial system is not about fairness so much as it is equality. Equality isn't always fair but in a country like this it's the best we can do.
Now what I'm about to say isn't an attack on you but instead just am observation. When people disagree with something they always try to explain why the bad thing happened. In this case it sounds like you're looking to explain away a decision you disagree with by saying the jurors should have been experts. If the jurors were experts and someone disagreed with the ruling then inevitably someone else would be sayng they should not be experts because of bias or some such reason.