Events

On Wednesday, July 24, at 2:00PM EDT, Knobbe Martens Partner Karen Weil will be a panelist on a webinar discussing "Court-appointed Damages Experts: A Growing Force in Patent Litigation?" This Intellectual Property Owners Association's (IPO) weekly one-hour webinar series features current topics in intelletual property and is hosted by Pamela Sherrid, former editor of IP Law & Business magazine.

Until recent years, few judges availed themselves of Rule 706 of the Federal Rules of Evidence, which allows a court to appoint its own neutral expert. But in two high-profile patent cases recently, Oracle v. Google and Apple v. Motorola, judges did. In Oracle v. Google, Judge William Alsup of the Northern District of California appointed a neutral expert after the parties submitted damages estimates ranging from nothing to $6.1 billion dollars. Apple v. Motorola ended at the Daubert hearing, when Seventh Circuit Judge Richard Posner, sitting by designation as a trial judge in the Northern District of Illinois, ruled inadmissible the damage testimony of both Apple’s and Motorola’s expert witnesses and dismissed the case with prejudice. More recently, Judge Posner has used a neutral expert for patent damages calculations in Brandeis University v. East Side Oven.

This panel will explore the potential help and harm of court-appointed damages experts, and explore whether this will be a growing trend. From an administrative point of view, what is the appointment process? What are (or can be) the neutral expert’s duties? Who bears the cost? Does the neutral expert just advise the judge at the Daubert hearing or does he/she testify to the jury? What is the potential of neutral experts to speed litigation and reduce costs? Or does a court-appointed expert witness threaten the right to a jury trial because juries will be unduly swayed by that testimony? How can a party successfully oppose the appointment of a given expert? Our panel includes the economist who was appointed by Judge Posner, the director of IP law at a Silicon Valley technology company, and a law firm litigator experienced in damages arguments.

For more information and to register, please visit the IPO website.