A Blog About Intellectual Property Litigation and the District of Delaware


Entries for tag: Jury Selection

Yes, real jurors would not be dressed like this. You'll have to use your imagination.
Yes, real jurors would not be dressed like this. You'll have to use your imagination. AI-Generated, displayed with permission

I think most attorneys admire counsel who can think outside-the-box and push the law forward.

I still remember the original, magistrate-judge-level oral argument in TC Heartland, where the Court asked counsel "if your argument is correct . . . there's really only two venues in which the suit can go forward, am I right?" and counsel answered with the oral argument equivalent of "yup"—even though that outcome was directly contrary to controlling Federal Circuit precedent and how everyone had done things for decades.

Then they appealed all the way to the Supreme Court, and changed the law for everybody. Mic …

Survey
Nguyen Dang Hoang Nhu, Unsplash

Juror questionnaires are rarely a sure thing. These are questionnaires that jury services sends to jurors called for service. The answers are then provided to the parties shortly before trial. Parties like them because they aid in jury selection, but the Court often raises concerns—although they do go out in some cases.

Judge Hall last week rejected a joint request for a jury questionnaire, noting that it would largely overlap with regular voir dire questions:

ORAL ORDER: Having reviewed the parties' joint letter regarding their request to send out a juror questionnaire (D.I. 522 ), IT IS ORDERED THAT the request is DENIED. The Court does not see a reason to burden the prospective …

Phases
Phases Mason Kimbarovsky, Unsplash

We've previously talked about how Chief Judge Connolly's new form orders split patent trials into phases, with willful infringement and damages tried only if there is a finding of infringement. We noted at the time that the new form order doesn't say in which phase invalidity goes—with infringement, or afterwards?

It looked like we got an answer late last month, when Chief Judge Connolly held a phased jury trial in Magnolia Medical Technologies, Inc. v. Kurin, Inc., C.A. No. 19-97-CFC-CJB (D. Del.). There, the Court split the trial into two phases, with infringement by itself and then invalidity and damages together.

In Magnolia, the jury found infringement, so …