Tuesday, April 21, 2015

Editing tricks fail to fool court; brief stricken

Looking for ways to outsmart the 14K word limit? Law360 today has a story titled Too-Long Brief Dooms Banking Patent Appeal at Fed. Circ., where "A trick straight out of high school English class cost [an appellant]" in a big way: its appeal was dismissed yesterday because the brief was too long. Apparently the appellant had "artificially shortened" the brief "by deleting spaces between words, creating confusing acronyms and using a code to abbreviate case citations." "Without those tricks, the brief was at least 15,259 words long."

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"For example, the following is not one word, although that is how it appears on page 3 of Appellants’ first corrected opening brief: Thornerv.SonyComputerEntm’tAmLLC669F3d1362,1365(Fed.Cir.2012).Instead, when written properly, it is 14 words: Thorner v. Sony Computer Entm't Am. LLC, 669 F.3d 1362, 1365 (Fed. Cir. 2012). Similar matters appeared throughout the brief."

Also in Law360 reporting on the Federal Circuit is AT&T Asks Full Fed. Circ. To Eye Sidley Blown Deadline Case, discussing AT&T's petition for rehearing en banc.

The Recorder profiles an appellate lawyer up north here.


No joke: High Court Flushes Fish Pedicure Appeal 
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Justice Hoffstadt's latest DJ article today is "It's Alive!" But What is it? about how "the California courts and the voters have together given life to the California Constitution in a way that has spawned a few consequences that no one expected."
You're Overreacting
States serve as laboratories for experimentation...