First of all it was great to meet Silver Surfer. We had some great discussions during break time. Secondly, Silver’s notes are really thorough and quite detailed. I tried to take notes but I couldn’t read half of what I wrote because I was trying to write fast and keep up while at the same time trying to follow what was happening. It was an exhausting day and I can’t believe that Silver has the energy to type up his notes after this very long day. He definitely deserves a cold drink after today!

Anyway, since Silver’s notes are far superior to mine I will supplement his with anything that I can add or expand upon but so far he has nailed it.

General observations:
The judge really seemed to throw everyone off when she opened the proceedings by saying that she was confused and that she wanted the lawyers to get together and discuss exactly what exhibits were going to be stipulated to and the order of importance of the claims. The lawyers left the courtroom to confer. Shortly after starting up again the judge ruled that the motion to exclude their expert witness because he was originally called as a rebuttal witness was denied. This was a big disappointment for me. I expected that we would try to reinstate our own expert witness after we found out that their expert witness was going to testify but that was not the case. In fact, Jameson said that our expert witness was not even present today in the courtroom. I was also disappointed by this.

Silver, I can’t recall exactly what he said about a job in Nuclear ?? either. It took me a bit by surprise and I am afraid I did not retain what was said. A few interesting bits: Mr. Norris said in his testimony that he had well over 50 (maybe as many as 70) patents and had “never had a patent denied”. Also, he was asked if he recalled a specific meeting with the patent office regarding this patent and he said “yes, in part because this was the ONLY time he ever had an interview with the Patent office.”

Woody was a VERY credible witness who showed himself to be intelligent but also reasonable and well spoken. I believe he did an excellent job in explaining what he understood and believed about the patent. On a negative note, there were are few times that he was not familiar with some of the documentation surrounding the patent application. (Possibly and amendment that was filled by his patent attorney??) Their lawyer asked if he had reviewed this document prior to the hearing today and he said no, he hadn’t seen this document in 20 years.

Also during the cross examination of Woody the defense made note of 2 times within the patent itself that a DSP was referred to as a Digital SUPPORT Processor instead of a Digital SIGNAL processor. Woody admitted that this was the first time he had ever noticed this and that is was likely a “typo”. (This point was handled skillfully in our cross exam of their expert witness later in the day.)

My parents were with me in court today (yes, I convinced them to buy edig about 10 years ago) and my mother raised the concern with me about whether the original patent attorney who filed the patent for Woody was completely competent. (In light of the Digital SUPPORT Processor typo.) In fact, my mom approached Mr. Jameson on a break and said with a smile, “I hope that original patent attorney was a good one.” ( And YES, I was a bit embarrassed that my mom was chatting up the lead attorney but what can you do? ;-) He replied, “He was not without fault.” Not really important but interesting.
I will write more as I think of it.