Patent infringement suits are usually about sifting through haystacks of paper to find at least one needle - a spring or other mechanism - that will demonstrate how one company's device differs from another. But don't take pity on the lawyers - feel sorry for the jurors who have to connect the dots between documents, photos, testimony, and perhaps a physical demonstration to decide yea or nay.
But in recent court cases, such as US Surgical v. Ethicon (1996), jurors and lawyers alike have been getting some multimedia help. The case, involving the design of a surgical clip, was decided in part by the use of an animated simulation to demonstrate that the clip designed by Johnson & Johnson subsidiary Ethicon functioned differently from one fashioned by US Surgical, the plaintiff in the case. Ethicon won.
"We did dissolves between photos and animations, and it brought the point home that Ethicon's [clip] was different," said Alan Lynch, senior project manager for Engineering Animation, the company that built the simulation.
Animated simulations are becoming more common in courts as lawyers awaken to the sometimes-controversial power of video presentations in helping boil down complex points into a cohesive narrative that jurors can more easily follow, says Edward Gipple, director of multimedia productions at Forensic Technology International.
These videos help jurors bone up on the nuances involved in some cases. For example, in US Surgical v. Ethicon, jurors needed to understand some of the basics of medical engineering involved in the design of the instruments, plus learn a bit about surgery and where and how doctors use clips. To help verify that the animation was based on engineering principles, Engineering Animation's own engineers were called in to testify as to the validity of the video.
"We had to explain how we worked from the actual instruments," said Lynch.
Such testimony is part of the regime of using simulations - it helps ease a judge's apprehensions and marries an expert to the video. For its part, Forensic Technologies has a staff of scientists in different disciplines and various engineers who also serve as expert witnesses. "It's like the time when photos were first introduced in the courtroom," explained Gipple. "You used to have to bring in a photographer to testify [on how the photo was taken], but now they're accepted."
Real engineering does go into these animations. Gipple notes that for plane-crash recreations, engineers on his staff take the tapes from the black boxes and feed the data into their computers. The information on the tape includes data such as the yaw, pitch, and roll of the plane, as well as its altitude and speed. From this, engineers can simulate the flight of the plane to - perhaps - demonstrate what could have contributed to a crash.
Still, the use of animations in courtrooms worries judges, who are loathe to see "reconstructions" of events that may be based more on a lawyer's opinions and theories than facts, says Frederic Lederer, chancellor/professor at the College of William and Mary School of Law.
"The better the animation, the more likely the jury will react to it," said Lederer, who is also the director of Courtroom 21, a highly technologized courtroom laboratory dedicated to studying how video, computers, and other gadgets affect legal presentations, testimony, and jurist opinion.
"It's like the Jurassic Park example - you have a dinosaur head coming at you and you're thinking, 'wasn't that done beautifully,'" he explained. "The human impact has nothing to do with the content of the presentation."
It is video and animation's potential to mesmerize jurors that still causes judges to dismiss their use. Lederer says lawyers have the most latitude to use animations as part of their opening and closing arguments, where they get to present their theories of a case. Simulations are also acceptable when used to augment expert witness testimony - which is the case in patent-infringement suits.
But it's when animations become evidence that lawyers enter a gray area. Lederer recalls a case that examined the collision between a motorcycle and a truck in which two animations were used to show that the former was at fault because the cyclist was driving too fast. Because the correct dimensions of the two vehicles were built into the animation along with their traveling speeds and the grade and condition of the road, the animation was acceptable as evidence.
"You're dealing with the pure rules of physics. So, in this instance, that's probably OK," said Lederer.
Nonetheless, Lederer isn't convinced that the use of animations or other technological advances is of real benefit in the courtroom - mostly because no one knows the real effect of it.
And Lederer ought to know - among the gadgets in his courtroom is a big-screen monitor that allows for video-conference testimony, along with a device that can translate 140 languages. Still, there's no evidence indicating whether witnesses are more or less likely to tell the truth if they're testifying remotely. Likewise, Lederer has no hard data showing whether jurors and judges are more or less likely to believe a witness testifying remotely.
The same dearth of information exists for animated simulations, he says.
"That's the dilemma. There's virtually no funding to find the answers to those questions," Lederer said. "Everyone wants to adopt technology, but no one wants to study whether it's going to do any good."
