The Need for Graphics in a Patent Trial, and Other Insights from Judges

After deliberations have finished, I’ve seen that the pictures were important to jurors because the whiteboards in the jury room often have the jurors’ reproductions of the pictures and diagrams that the attorneys used during trial. The juries are not writing out the long claims of the patents. Instead, they discuss the case in abstractions using those pictures from trial. − Hon. Paul Grewal

These judicial observations on graphics in patent trials came from a judges’ panel at last weekend’s Annual Meeting of the San Francisco Intellectual Property Law Association (SFIPLA) in Healdsburg, California. As usual, the annual meeting provided wonderful opportunities to learn about recent developments in intellectual property law and to network and relax with leading IP attorneys and judges.

On Saturday, the meeting featured a judges’ panel of current and former judges from the Northern District of California discussing IP litigation. The panel consisted of Senior District Judge Susan Illston, Magistrate Judge Paul Grewal and retired District Judge James Ware (now a mediator at JAMS). Michael Carlson, a patent litigator at Schnader and the Vice President of SFIPLA, guided the discussion.

The judges shared their experiences and reflections on what works and what doesn’t work in a courtroom, and how to connect with juries and judges in patent trials and hearings. In this post, I’m going to share some of those comments. [Note that while I try to be accurate here, and I scribbled notes and live-tweeted during the session, so you shouldn’t consider this post or my tweets as a transcript. For the tweets from this SFIPLA meeting or future meetings, check out www.twitter.com/sfipla.]   (more…)