Re: Judge or Jury

On Fri, 02 Apr 1999, Nick Zales <zales[_at_]execpc.com> wrote:
>
> A copyright infringement action seeking damages can be tried to a judge
> or jury. What are people's experiences with trials to the court or a
> judge. Is one preferable over the other? I find copyright claims are
> so esoteric, and the law so subtle and bizarre, that a jury would seem
> incapable of fairly deciding the issues. On the other hand, trying a
> case to a Federal judge, who is neither knowledgeable nor interested in
> the hypertechnical aspect of such claims, does not seem too palatable
> either.

There aren't a lot of copyright jury trials. According to Table C4 in "Judicial Business of the US Courts," only 24 copyright cases that terminated in 1998 went to jury. That's way up from 1997 when there were only 12. The number is 62 for patents (up from 54) and 31 for trademark (30 in 1997). Non-jury trials were approximately equal in number (except for patents of which there one-third fewer). The report is at http://www.uscourts.gov/dirrpt98/c04sep98.pdf

I've no idea how trials that include more than one of these claims are categorized.

Diane Cabell
http://wwww.mama-tech.com/
Fausett, Gaeta & Lund, LLP
Boston, MA
<cabell[_at_]mama-tech.com> Received on Sat Apr 03 1999 - 15:28:46 GMT