[ih] legal models [was: there must be a corollary to Godwin's law about Sec 230, was ARPANET pioneer]

[Vint Cerf]

point well taken - we should value knowledge where it exists and facilitate
it where it doesn't.
v


On Mon, Mar 7, 2022 at 11:47 AM Bob Purvy via Internet-history <
internet-history at elists.isoc.org> wrote:

> If you'll pardon some bragging, I do have personal experience with German
> lawyers and German courts. I think I earned my salary for my entire 11 1/2
> years there on this one. (Oddly, Vint, I never talked to you about it.)
> They are very, very good.
>
> In 2014, things were looking
> <https://www.themarysue.com/google-maps-facing-german-ban/> very bleak for
> Maps in Germany. Microsoft had bought a patent for online maps, and the
> German courts had found that Google Maps infringed it. They were actually
> going to grant an injunction against Maps while the validity of the patent
> was adjudicated. They use different courts for infringement and invalidity.
>
> Naturally, all of us in Patent Litigation (I was a Tech Advisor) set about
> searching for prior art. Things get thin before about 1996. A couple of
> days, and nothing.
>
> Then out of desperation, I went to Google Scholar and searched "client
> server maps." Who'd have thought of *that*? The very first result was this
> <
> https://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.49.4371&rep=rep1&type=pdf
> >.
> I made a claim chart and it seemed to work. I flew down to LA to meet our
> two German attorneys from Quinn Emanuel, and our maps expert. We spent the
> day looking for something a little less technical, but came up empty, so we
> went with this.
>
> Ralf Uhrich is honestly one of the 10 smartest people I've ever met in my
> life. He has a PhD in computer science plus a law degree. He used this
> paper and asked the judge to reconsider the injunction. Amazingly, he did.
>
> Ralf later went to the Patent Court in Munich, and destroyed
> <
> https://www.zdnet.com/article/microsoft-loses-mapping-patent-tussle-in-german-fight-with-google-and-motorola/
> >
> Microsoft's patent. Especially satisfying was that they tried to dispute
> the date of the DeWitt publication, and Ralf produced a Microsoft press
> release about their hiring of DeWitt. It cited that paper.
>
> I didn't get to go to that, since I wasn't needed, but what I heard is that
> their courts are much less formal than ours, and more down-to-earth. You
> can just walk into the judge's chambers and talk to him, which would get
> you arrested in the United States.
>
> So if you claim lawyers and judges are stupid and don't understand tech:
> no, you're wrong.
>
> On Mon, Mar 7, 2022 at 2:10 AM Dr Eberhard W Lisse via Internet-history <
> internet-history at elists.isoc.org> wrote:
>
> > My impression/experience is quite the opposite, lawyers are usually very
> > clever people (they make a living using the word as a weapon so to
> > speak, and can read themselves into complex issues amazingly quickly) but
> > of course ambulance chasers might find that difficult.
> >
> > In Common Law countries judges are selected from experienced lawyers, ie
> > it's further, positive selection. But, they only adjudicate the
> > issue(s) before them ("on the papers") as narrowly as possible.
> >
> > So you get what you pay for.
> >
> >
> > In Germany the grade of your law school exam and the one after the two
> > year internship (akin to the Bar Exam) are the determining factor of
> > becoming a (junior) judge and then progress to higher courts.  These
> > courts adjudge a little wider and if there is complex matter the courts
> > will hear both sides experts and perhaps even appoint one.
> >
> >
> > Many judgements I have read (US, UK, ZA, NA and DE) to a reasonable to
> > good job of framing the jargon into plain English/German.
> >
> > el
> >
> > On 2022-03-07 03:26 , Brian E Carpenter via Internet-history wrote:
> > [...]
> > > 2) You cannot assume that advocates and judges understand the
> > > technology well enough to argue and adjudicate correctly. There's
> > > been a persistent failure to distinguish value from reference, for
> > > example, not helped by lousy terminology such as "address" when
> > > a URL is meant (even without starting on the distinction between
> > > URL, URN and URI).
> > [...]
> > --
> > Dr. Eberhard W. Lisse   \         /       Obstetrician & Gynaecologist
> > el at lisse.NA             / *      |  Telephone: +264 81 124 6733
> <+264%2081%20124%206733> (cell)
> > PO Box 8421 Bachbrecht  \      /  If this email is signed with GPG/PGP
> > 10007, Namibia           ;____/ Sect 20 of Act No. 4 of 2019 may apply
> > --
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> > Internet-history at elists.isoc.org
> > https://elists.isoc.org/mailman/listinfo/internet-history
> >
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>


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