UnifiedOnline Inc fka UOIP

[zombywolf]

The zombywolf report-Day 1 of trial

Well Folks, back on the road again to report observations of our first infringement (hopefully the last) trial vs the 13. Our inventors irrepressive 20+ year search for justice is finally here, cornering those rascals at Cox by judge's choice for the first trial. Joined at the hip during this session is Long Term (LT), zombywolfmom (ZWM) and your host for the reports-me, stunt court reporter. For the next week, you will live inside my my observant, sometimes insensitive, reckless, critical and hopefully comical assessments of the goings on here. LT is particularly adept at written details and will rely on him for perhaps more detailed posts on subjects and people involved in the trial. ZWM is your personal jury representative-she is like everyone on the jury-professional, soccer mom, grocery store shopper and not shy to offer opinions. We sad to report that Magnus and our friend from York are MIA, as they have attended hearings up to this point. We will be picking up 007Roger and his fine lady on Monday, perhaps more when this trial really gets going on Monday.

Got to court a little past 9:30, found LT already there. We were directed to an alternate courtroom 4 floors down from 6A, it seems no observers will be allowed in the main courtroom for Covid reasons. Ok, I get that. The alternate courtroom is the same as 6A, it just has a big 65" or so HDTV connected to a camera up there. You can see the judge to the left screen, the two lawyer groups along the far wall with the video screen on the wall between them. The lawyers have a podium right under that screen and the witness box is to the far right, just past our lawyers table. The jurors are at the bottom of our screen facing away, and we can only see the 4 people in the front row and they face away from us. So no info can be given on how much sleep they are all going to get, just a couple up front.

First thing that struck me was where are all the observers? When ZWM and I arrived to the alternate room, there was at most a dozen observers including LT seated on the benches watching the tube. We have usually had a ton of lawyers from the other side at the hearings, and now at the main event-MIA like some of our peeps. Could be they arent interested in the jury picks, but testimony started after lunch, and less were in the room even for that. I havent missed one hearing since the beginning, so this all struck me as strange.

Morning was all abour picking a jury and instructions about how things were to be handled. There was an apparent pool of only 15 people to pick from-mostly women and a couple of men. Judge remarked he felt there was enough to get a jury picked so he started with some questions to screen some of them publically, like fear of Covid, any experience with IP cases, ect. A few had one or more issues expressed, but those were probably addressed during individual intereviews with the lawyers. The mike to those sessions was cut off to us down in the fun room, so we didnt hear any of it. Probably the reasons for a rash of posts between 10 and about 11:30 AM, nothing to do but read posts from you guys and check on doings at $PCTL, $CATV, and $RGBP with fins coming up for each soon (wink,wink).

Around 11:30 we were informed about the panel- 8 women, 1 man. One was the alternate juror, not sure which was picked for that. Could possibly have an all woman jury-never heard of that before. I try to keep my antics underground so I dont see the insides of too many courtrooms, so that would color my observation on that, LOL. A little talk by Judge on stuff, and we get let loose for lunch around 11:45.

Not knowing the area, LT,ZWM and I were off for grub. Found a place called Chelsea Tavern a couple of blocks away. Your basic beer pub kind of place, food ok, service slow. Because of that, we were a little late for the opening statements by the two sides. Came back to trial somewhere in the middle of Whitman's statement. Seemed OK to the points I