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.
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.
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.
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.
It's a messy issue with no perfect solution so non-experts are the best solution so far.
Really? Why not? Do you have any citations to back this up?
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.
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.
How is that different from expert testimony given to laymen?
Except that once one lawyer screws up, the legal precedent is set, and the rest of the people down the line get screwed too.
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.
Given the numbers of phones Samsung is selling the per device fine isn't that high. Compared to copyright infringement statutory damages in files sharing cases the amounts are tiny.
Edit to add:
Some fair points were made in replies about the complexity of the patent law compared with criminal/murder cases but the parent to this was commenting the scale of the damages decided rather than complexity and that was the focus of my comment.
Yes it is scary but I'm not sure I can think of less scary options for really serious criminal cases.
Having been on a federal jury for a gun running charge, I can't even begin to describe how difficult that moment is when the future of someone's life is in your hands. I think the maximum penalty was only 7 years, but even that is enough for you to question every shread of evidence both sides presented.
However you /DO/ need to understand prior art to rule in a patent dispute. There's no escaping that.
Technically minded people like us often bitch about how the mass media publish misleading "facts" (and often complete fallacies) due to their lack of technical understanding. Yet here we have a jury ignorantly making billion dollar decisions.
It's a bit like asking a group of hair dressers to officially confirm or deny whether CERN's "faster than light" neutrinos were a calculation error or not.
I don't know if you intended that to be comforting, but I really can't see it that way.
And that is even if I ignore my suspicion (hope?) that the average juror will tread with more care if they are considering the life of another person, than if they are considering a corporation's money.
http://www.deathpenaltyinfo.org/innocence-and-death-penalty#...
The problem is that this case wasn't really about Samsung, and it wasn't really about a few companies, or the fine. This was a high profile case about a broken IP system, a rogue gorilla and an outcome that stifles innovation in the technical arena (not just smartphones). You don't think someone will think twice before even going near Apple again, regardless of the validity (or prior art) of the patent? I am incredulous that anyone could have come to the conclusion of this juror, particularly someone with a tech background.
Hopefully, this won't be the last battle that could turn this madness around.
And Googorola and Samsung are the real rogues with their FRAND abuse.
Part of where this juries judgement seems to have come from is the sense that Samsung was copying more than they felt appropriate. I know that this might not be quite legally the correct approach but maybe it is the strength of using a jury that they can balance a total judgement rather than just summing individual damages.
The file sharing copyright judgements may be more sensible if a jury decided the damages.
It bothers me that we seem to be attacking the jurors as if they were appointed in this case via back-door-meetings between the government and apple. Didn't Samsung get the opportunity to interview the candidates? Were they allowed to remove potential jurors from the pool? If this was the jury they all agreed on then the people to be angry at is Samsung's pool of lawyers, not the jurors they selected (or rather, jurors they didn't dismiss).
Of course, but each side has a limited number of times to veto a jury member. Those run out pretty quickly.
You've got to get past this mindset. Was there prior art? Did Apple really invent this? Were the patents specific, non-obvious, etc.
No, No, ...
When you add that the outcome stifles innovation and a you add a broken IP system, you have so many nails in the coffin, it isn't funny.
Case closed.
your comment about anchoring is spot on.
No, it seems democratic. The law is about the will of the people --which is what the "jury of your peers" tries to capture--, not about what some experts say.
Experts can serve the court with their "expert advice" (which lots of times in such cases is just BS, depending on which side pays their bills).
It's dead easy as a lawyer to find experts with Phd's and all, to testify both pro and against patents, or both pro and against each company in this dispute).