[grellas]

Appellate courts do not lightly overturn jury verdicts using highly fact-specific reviews of evidence. There is a reason they call a jury a "trier of fact".

There is a reason for this: if it were the rule that an appellate court could easily step in and second-guess how a jury weighs evidence, there would be little room for finality with jury verdicts because lawyers are very skilled (and become very tiresome) endlessly arguing why this or that fact is better than another and why a court should weigh things differently than the way a jury did.

In this case, the Federal Circuit Court did what amounted a wholesale second-guessing of what the jury concluded about the facts here.

I am not saying the issues were not complex and that it had absolutely no basis for coming to different conclusions.

But the zeal with which this particular court upholds IP absolutism is truly a marvel.

This is the court that gave us the frivolous patent bonanza dating back to 1990s by which "everything under the sun" became patentable and many suffered for years from the consequent harm.

So too with the way it is handling copyright law in this Oracle/Google dispute. Yes, by all means, let us protect the hell out of APIs and invite endless future litigation that ensures that easy connectivity in the computer world will no longer depend on engineers but on lawyers. And let us say that "no reasonable jury" could possibly conclude that copying even a tiny amount of code could possibly be "quantitatively insignificant" so as to shield the one doing the copying from claims of copyright infringement, all the better to ensure that future lawyers can conjure up infringement claims from all sorts of seemingly quantitatively trivial copying.

I deliberately exaggerate in how I characterize this decision knowing that it glosses over all sorts of fine points that are the subject of profound argument among lawyers. But I do so to capture the spirit of this decision and what decisions like this mean for computing generally.

Yes, a very broad theory of what is patentable can readily be defended in the name of protecting IP rights and lawyers can come up with endless arguments for why this should be so. So too can lawyers make convincing arguments for very broad theories of copyrightability and very narrow readings of fair use. In both cases, the law protecting IP gets an expansive reading.

Well, speaking as one who has tilled this soil for a long time and who very much supports and sees the need for strong support of IP rights, I can only say that the Federal Circuit Court has proven to be a largely counter-productive force in serving as a specialized court dealing with IP among federal courts. This ruling will do what its prior expansive reading of patent law did: it will set up a legal standard that invites lawyers and litigants to engage in endless second-guessing over copyright and fair use in areas of connectivity and inter-operability in the computing world and this in turn, as a standing invitation to litigate, cannot be good for future development.

[DannyBee]

"In this case, the Federal Circuit Court did what amounted a wholesale second-guessing of what the jury concluded about the facts here."

It's worse than that. They are supposed to be applying ninth circuit law, and they roundly haven't throughout the entire appeals.

They've made a complete mess of it. First in copyrightability, and now fair use. There are even ninth circuit judges who have spoken out about this.

[scoggs]

For someone who is very much on the outside of understanding this situation, if you think you know enough to comment on it overall, would you say that they are mishandling it due to generally misunderstanding the gravity of the verdicts they are handing out or is it more to do with not precisely understanding the technology, what goes into creating such technology, how technology is propagated and improved, and how that diaspora of code and information winds up becoming the open or closed source "fabric" of what we know as computing today?

[DannyBee]

They just think the ninth circuit is wrong. They are reasonably well informed, they just disagree.

People very often make the mistake of assuming two people with the same data will form the same opinion, and that where people disagree, it must be due to not understanding the data/etc.

In my experience, this is very wrong :)

[scoggs]

Thank you. I can totally understand that. I appreciate it.

[DannyBee]

Of course.

I've met the ex-Chief Judge of the federal circuit, Randall Rader, a number of times (he also taught a class i took in law school at GWU).

He's definitely not stupid, is cognizant of how people view his decisions (he said "they loved me when i wrote nintendo vs. atari and hated me when i wrote other things"), and really did believe he is making things better.

Of course, i strongly disagree, but like i said, it's not like he doesn't understand the issues.

[wtallis]

Can the Ninth Circuit itself petition the Supreme Court to intervene and stop the Federal Circuit from making a hash of Ninth Circuit law?

[dragonwriter]

> Can the Ninth Circuit itself petition the Supreme Court to intervene and stop the Federal Circuit from making a hash of Ninth Circuit law?

Technically, this doesn't have any effect on 9th Circuit law because CAFC decisions applying (and I use that term loosely, here) a particular Circuit’s law do not form new binding precedent for courts in that circuit (or even precedent binding on the CAFC itself in future cases applying the same law.)

But, no, the Ninth Circuit can't intervene that way, though tension between Ninth Circuit precedent and a decision, even if non-binding on other courts, in the CAFC presents an issue similar to a conflict between circuits that would ordinarily seem to weigh in favor of the Supreme Court taking the case on appeal, since avoiding effectively having different systems of federsl law applied to different cases is one reason the Supreme Court exercised it's discretion to hear appeals. It seems certain that Google will appeal this.

[ScottBurson]

If anyone wants more background on where the Federal Circuit came from and why it has caused so many problems, check this out: https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2012/09/how-a-rogue-appe...

[tripzilch]

> Appellate courts do not lightly overturn jury verdicts using highly fact-specific reviews of evidence. There is a reason they call a jury a "trier of fact".

Just to get this straight, because I think I roughly know the legal system works in the US, from TV and movies, but then when I apply it to a real world case such as this, it seems too ridiculous for words: by "jury" you're actually referring to a group of about 10-12 randomly selected laymen with no background in law whatsoever, and even specifically selected to also have no background in the subject matter (because knowledge equals prejudice /s), and they get to decide on the outcome of a billion dollar case?

[fuzzieozzie]

[cynical comment] Do you think the court is trying to guarantee jobs for lawyers?

[jadedhacker]

It's worse than that, they're trying to guarantee profits for companies. Even though this is two titans fighting it out, the only people who benefit from an ultra strict copyright regime will be the people that can afford to fight it out in court. Everyone except people that hold shares in large companies will lose out.

[mattnewton]

As a shareholder in large companies I’m not sure I even benefit. The legal departments are going to have to have a bigger budget to deal with this, and new IP is going to be costlier to develop / buy / defend.

[na85]

That lawyers exist is a good thing. It means we have a human, nuanced perspective on the finer points and interpretation of the law, which in Western civilization reigns supreme over all other things.

Lawyers will never become obsolete until we no longer live in a society that obeys the rule of law.

[snowwrestler]

You're going to get downvoted because you're posting this in a forum of largely programmers, many of whom believe that every problem is essentially a programming problem, and that the law could be computer code if only the spec were well-enough defined.

In reality, "defining the spec" is the entire purpose of having a legal system in the first place. A nation is a machine that is evolving its own state. There's no outside "programmer" who can observe and define the entirety of the desired state. (Unless you believe in an active interested conception of God, perhaps.)

The legislators, lawyers, and judges who tell us what the law is, are part of society too--and that's why the law changes over time. It's supposed to change over time. The law constrains human behavior, but it also reflects human behavior, so the state of what's legal right now exists in a weird state of superposition between the two.

But, the fantasy that one is outside of, or separate from, society is a popular one--seen most clearly expressed in the libertarian creed, but popular in Silicon Valley too, at least from a business perspective. What do most tech companies want from the government? To stay the heck out of their business, stay far away, and don't bother me. That includes lawyers.

So you're going to get downvoted here, but I don't think that means you're wrong.

[paulddraper]

I dislike large numbers of lawyers for the same reason I dislike large amounts of code.

It indicates there is a large amount of incidental complexity.

Clearly, exterminating lawyers or deleting random files is not a workable solution. But we should invest in reducing the system to essential complexity. If we are successful, the symptoms will subside.

[BlackFly]

I strongly disagree.

In this day and age, there are far too many laws to both understand and be sure you are law abiding. Ignorance of the law is a given. Ignorance not being an excuse for something like murder makes sense because you should just know better, ignorance not being an excuse in possession of the feathers of a protected animal that you found on the ground should be valid even though this presents an insurmountable burden to prosecution: it shouldn't be possible that picking up feathers you find on the ground is a crime, but it is.

The sentence "a lawyer who represents himself has a fool for a client" should be an indictment of the legal system and not a jeer at the self-represented. Justice should be given to those who deserve it, not to those who manufacture it through technicalities. The fact that a lawyer is necessary to achieve justice implies you are not achieving justice but rather merely a bureaucratic victory.

This state just renders law into bureaucracy and divorces it from the concept of justice. The rule of law is only sensible insofar as it can achieve justice, not as its own end divorced of anything humanly meaningful.

[paulddraper]

> That lawyers exist is a good thing.

The more common term is "necessary evil".

[kbutler]

In an ideal world, lawyers would be advocates seeking to provide a nuanced, human perspective.

In the current world, I think it is more common to be seeking loopholes, weaknesses, and exploits instead.

[na85]

I can see how a person that only knows about law what they read in the headlines could come to that conclusion, but painting lawyers with a broad brush as you have is no more of a generalization than me saying that every Facebook employee is devoid of morals and ethics.

[kbutler]

Which lawyers in what context do you see providing that nuanced human perspective?

Corporate law? Their job is keep us from getting sued.

Family law? If you're advocating that human perspective for the opposing party, are you failing your duty to your client?

Prosecutors? Not sure they have that discretion.

General legal services, probate, etc. Doesn't seem that applicable.

Intellectual Property? Human perspective? Unlikely, except maybe the "hard-working inventor" angle.

Defense attorneys? Sure. That could be a good angle - along with any possible opening to exploit.

[TheCoelacanth]

> Family law? If you're advocating that human perspective for the opposing party, are you failing your duty to your client?

They shouldn't be advocating the opposing party's human perspective in court, but they certainly should be doing it privately to the client. Things will usually work out better for them if they can reach an amicable compromise out of court rather than having to engage in protracted legal battles with their own family.

> Prosecutors? Not sure they have that discretion.

Prosecutors absolutely have that discretion. They don't have to take every case to court and they don't have to seek the harshest allowable punishment for every case they do take to court. They are supposed to be serving the public interest, not seeking to imprison as many people as possible.

[na85]

Every single point in this post is a broad-brush generalization perpetuated by media stereotypes.

[nojvek]

Lawyers are essentially social hackers trying to find weaknesses in IP laws and exploiting them for massive profit. It’s essentially court warfare

[kbutler]

> Lawyers will never become obsolete until we no longer live in a society that obeys the rule of law.

I think the core problem is that this misinterpets the phrase "rule of law", which Google defines as "the restriction of the arbitrary exercise of power by subordinating it to well-defined and established laws."

If your lawyer's arguments, preparation, and skill matter, or if it matters whether you have a lawyer or not, then you are being subject to "arbitrary interpretation" of the legal landscape, rather than to well-defined and established (and understood) law.

Your /lawyer's/ actions affect the judgment, rather than just your actions.