I think it would be near impossible for someone who has passed the patent bar to genuinely set aside their "specialized knowledge" when hearing a patent case. In fact, I will flat-out assert that it's impossible, because when you become a domain expert in that way, you internalize a great deal of the training. If one side flubs an explanation of prior art or of some other term of art, the rest of the jury may be confused or be under a misapprehension and the patent attorney will not be. You'd have to be both unusually self aware and a saint to i) recognize the misapprehension you would be under in that situation if you didn't have domain knowledge, and ii) try to reach a decision as if you were under that misapprehension.<p>In other words, I think it's a complete fiction to tell people to set aside professional training and the knowledge and background that comes with that when they're acting as a jury member. If you were hearing a civil case involving programming, would you be able to set aside your knowledge of programming and hear the case as if you were a layperson? I wouldn't.
I'm quite skeptical as to how you could ever come to a fair conclusion with a juror that isn't supposed to know about the field specifically.<p>How are you supposed to make an argument that some software patent is trivial to someone that hasn't programmed a single line in their life? It would take years to educate someone as to how computers and languages work for them to get any reasonable idea about what the case really is about.
Wow, so it's not just the duty of the Samsung lawyers to weed out trouble some jurors (from their perspective) but also the duty of the judge to educate the jurors on this issue. Of course, we don't yet know whether the judge in the apple trial has issued these instructions.<p>edit:
Also, this puts aside the debate about whether a more technical jury would have given a different verdict.
It seems to me that all this wrangling and instructing juries is an argument for having dedicated, technically and juridically trained jurists decide these cases.
While I find this all sad and disheartening, I really wish we'd get better insights into what Samsung's lawyers are doing about it rather than all the complaining about how badly the jury did their assignment.<p>Surely if there is a way to use this in either a motion for a mistrial or to force a judicial review they not doubt would be filing it.
PJ's bias is getting ridiculous now.<p>When you read this line that the foreman "used knowledge from that experience to convince the other jurors that Samsung's prior art was not valid" you are led to believe coercion occurred. When in fact there is no evidence of this at all. Likewise the foreman "played his own role as an "expert", to decide the case" makes it seem like the foreman was the one making all the decisions.<p>I've been on two juries in the past and everyone takes the role seriously. Especially for a high profile and expensive case as this one. So are we really going to let this picture be painted that one person made the decision here ?