The zombywolf Report
Back again, Folks! This time your heros zw, zwm, Magnus, LT and our friend from York (needs a handle), arrive at US District Court in Delaware.
Similar to last time, fate throws zw and zwm a little character test in the begining. Unlike the Moses-like trek through the heat in DC caused by reliance on the evil Google maps, this time it was parking.
Arriving at the courthouse, we spied an open spot close to the building. Parked, and found the meter out of order. Wasted a couple quarters, then saw the tag on it for a pay app. Tsaking an inordinate time to download, zwm lost patience and found a meter guy. Talked to him and found he reported it and said if you wernt going to be more than two hours, he would let us slide. Assured him that no way would it be longer than that (Ho, Ho, Ho we found later) than that. Off to court.
Pregame
Arrived to the 6th floor, and found suits and the rest of our group milling around outsite the courtroom, casually dressed as usual. LT always has to put a $10 shine on a $5 pair of boots with us by wearing a sportcoat with his jeans to make us look bad. Same crowd as last time in DE in June 2018, including the 3 inventors. We made our rounds like a cheap cocktail party, without cheap cocktails, talking to the inventors and Robert Whitman. LT finally got his quest for info on SEP's answered by Robert- has nothing to do with this case. 3:00 passes, no start. 3:15 passes, no start. Getting close to 3:30-what's up??? Finally, they let us in a couple minutes later.
Game Time
We sit down behind the inventors, and look over at a pretty full side of suits on the Comcast side. Looked like a lot of interest from somebody over there. Court starts, and everyone but your heroes get introduced. Announced were multiple Comcast personnel, and reps from Charter, Cablevision and maybe one more company. Process sarts at maybe 3:40 or so.
Hearing
What was to be decided was a summary judgement on non infringement, and some issues tied to Daubert. Both sides start their powerpoint arguments on how the tech works from their own perspective. We learned more than we ever wanted to know about channels, modulation, combiners, multiplexers, signals, ect. Comcast promoted 2 separate theories on why there was no infringement. First was that unlike our claims, their signal arrival and process through was different. Our claims show a signal (these descriptions are from a liberal arts major, not an engineering one) coming in and filling up the first of 4 channels, then by a triggering process get redirected to the other channels to keep the mpbs rate from slowing. Comcast claims their signal comes in and is immediately distributed to all 4 channels, not needing the "trigger", which is the core of our claims. We went back and forth between the two sides answering questions from the judge, and watching powerpoint quotations applicable from both sides experts- Dr Nettles for us, Dr Akl(?) for them. Both sides used quotes pre-selected to butress their case. Robert Whitman was doing this part for us, and was awesome in his defense of our tech. He clearly described how it worked and thundered against the BS offered by Comcast when challenged by their lawyer. The second theory from Comcast was completely different. This was a more complex theory, and it was a bit harder to follow. It described a device called a combiner, or maybe a multiplexer, in the system to handle the signals. I wont attempt to describe it-maybe one of the others can help-and I will think about it over the next few weeks. This time a new expert was revealed, her name was Quigley, supposedly expert in the art. The judge hit Comcast a lot harder on this expert, with opinions expressed with more doubt imo, than the first one. Same back and forth with quotes out of the depos record, well defended by our side. Then we went onto the Daubert issues for a break.
This was a little comedy relief for our bruised brains. The main topic was a Comcast expert report on valuation of the tech. They put a timeline up from 2000 to 2015 shown attempts by the inventors to get financing for the tech. Showed amounts ranging from $2MM-5MM, with no interest from anyone. They attempted to use that as what the inventors valued their tech, and in the final decision the judge scoffed at that and had them provide previous case histories twhere that was done. They have 2 days to provide it to him with the most relevant case first, if not relevant to him, wont read the rest. Ten their was some issue in there that stated the inventors tried to sell the patents for some low figure-no proof other than some third party business broker-that they valued the tech at that price. This will be a big part of the trial going forward trying to use this approach. Nothing including current uses of the tech were provided by them as valuation, in my estimation, its you snooze, you lose if you didnt pony up back then.
At the end, you could see the judge wanted out of there, and ruled. Comcast lost on summary judgement-he said there is enough there on our claims for trial. The small stuff were opinions from the judge on some Daubert stuff that either went our way or they had to provide more info to him, no wins for Comcast on anything.
Post Game
As noted earlier, all concerns were whether we got towed or not due to the extended time for the hearing. LT was smart and parked in the garage, and Magnus ran out during the hearing and fed the meter. We couldnt do that because of the meter problem, and decided to let the parking god deliver our fate. Astonished, no tow or ticket, just the almost end to a great day, including only 2 quarters in the broke meter. Aint life grand! Nobody wanted to join us for dinner because of the late hour, so unplussed we headed to visit Mrs Robino. Nice crowd for a Monday night with $5 bottom shelf gin martinis on special. Had to, of course, considering our success today. Funny thing about the martini, there was a couple celebrating a birthday near us. The birthday song started, and of course, we had to chime in. Well the waitress wasnt used to my unbelieveable poor singing voice-thought it was the martini. I sad no, it was normal for me to be out of tune. LOL. Great dinner as usual, and then a big surprise. Specialneeds offered to pay the check!! Called the restaurant and paid for it over the phone. Asked the waiter if there ever was a check payment from the heavens before, he said only once or twice. Told him 3 times now. Could this have been a better day with the case, parking and dinner? Hokey Smoke Bullwinkle!!
That is it for now Folks! I am sure I left out some stuff, and will probably remember somethings as we go along.
zw and zwm out!!!!
