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."

"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 


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."

States serve as laboratories for experimentation...