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Is it possible for Grindley to offer his deposition for free to one side and not the other?

 Aerethan wrote:
Is it possible for Grindley to offer his deposition for free to one side and not the other?

That's generally how it works. Expert witnesses are contacted by one side and asked to present testimony that supports their argument. Some cases even involve competing expert witnesses (one for each side but from the same field) who refute each others' testimonies.

His deposition is to the court and consists of his expert testimony on the topic.

It would be a violation of ethics to slant testimony towards a favoured side, whoever is paying (or not).

The fact that his testimony is "anti" GW merely reflects the facts indicating their case is wrong.

 Kilkrazy wrote:

It would be a violation of ethics to slant testimony towards a favoured side, whoever is paying (or not)..

As understand, this. Just because you're paying a testifier doesn't mean you're buying a testimony.

 Kilkrazy wrote:
His deposition is to the court and consists of his expert testimony on the topic.

It would be a violation of ethics to slant testimony towards a favoured side, whoever is paying (or not).

The fact that his testimony is "anti" GW merely reflects the facts indicating their case is wrong.

I could have worded that better. Lets just say that no attorney will contact an expert to appear before court if they feel that their views ran counter to their argument. If they do a thorough job of vetting the witness, there's no issue as they will be consistent in their answers. This is why it's usually favorable to contact experts who have prior court appearances under their belt.

More likely, however, is GW losing the majority of their claims.

In large part because they have made their claims much too broad for unregistered trademarks.

I would be surprised, but not very surprised, to see GW lose the entirety of this case.

And, on purchasing companies that are not for sale... sometimes folks do turn down what would appear to be an overwhelming offer in order to maintain their own control of their company.

The Auld Grump

 agnosto wrote:

 Kilkrazy wrote:
His deposition is to the court and consists of his expert testimony on the topic.

It would be a violation of ethics to slant testimony towards a favoured side, whoever is paying (or not).

The fact that his testimony is "anti" GW merely reflects the facts indicating their case is wrong.

I could have worded that better. Lets just say that no attorney will contact an expert to appear before court if they feel that their views ran counter to their argument. If they do a thorough job of vetting the witness, there's no issue as they will be consistent in their answers. This is why it's usually favorable to contact experts who have prior court appearances under their belt.

That was my understanding of the matter. CHS has Grindley as their expert witness because his views match the views of the defence in this case and his interpretations of things supports their arguments the strongest.

If this wasn't the case you wouldn't have situations were two opposing expert witnesses were tearing each other's testimonies apart despite being experts in the same thing. But because the expert witnesses are chosen by a particular side, their planned testimony will naturally coincide with that side's arguments.

At least that's my layman's understanding of it.

EDIT: I guess what I'm saying is part of the criteria an expert witness is chosen for is their argument helping "stack the deck" in one side's favour. Yes the opposing side will get to deposition them and/or question their testimony at trial but the fact is that the expert witness isn't hired by the court to be a witness but by one side or another, and thus is chosen because something they have to say helps that side's argument.

 agnosto wrote:

 Kilkrazy wrote:
His deposition is to the court and consists of his expert testimony on the topic.

It would be a violation of ethics to slant testimony towards a favoured side, whoever is paying (or not).

The fact that his testimony is "anti" GW merely reflects the facts indicating their case is wrong.

I could have worded that better. Lets just say that no attorney will contact an expert to appear before court if they feel that their views ran counter to their argument. If they do a thorough job of vetting the witness, there's no issue as they will be consistent in their answers. This is why it's usually favorable to contact experts who have prior court appearances under their belt.

Completely fair comment.

It is interesting that Chapter House were fairly easily able to find an academic who was prepared to say that big shoulder pads were a common trope of SF, and GW were apparently unable to find an academic who would have argued against that.

Just imagine for a moment, what a fine TV ad campaign GW could have made with 700,000 $, doubling customer numbers and revenue within 2 years. Instead, they want to crush tiny companies with crazy claims.

 Kroothawk wrote:
Just imagine for a moment, what a fine TV ad campaign GW could have made with 700,000 $, doubling customer numbers and revenue within 2 years. Instead, they want to crush tiny companies with crazy claims.

Let's be honest here, anyone who has seen GW's past attempts at television adverts knows that GW and television ads don't mix.

On the otherhand, GW and static image banner ads might do nicely.

Or a worldwide summer campaign with an online interactive map showing near to real-time updates in territory ownership as various factions battle in bunkers and FLGS across the globe. There would be a meaningful milestone every month where the faction that succeeded the most would progress the storyline in a meaningful way and see a model/scenario/artwork/scenery release honoring its achievements.

The benefits to the HHHobby and player base are SO BLATANTLY OBVIOUS that there's really no reason not to do this.

 sourclams wrote:
Or a worldwide summer campaign with an online interactive map showing near to real-time updates in territory ownership as various factions battle in bunkers and FLGS across the globe. There would be a meaningful milestone every month where the faction that succeeded the most would progress the storyline in a meaningful way and see a model/scenario/artwork/scenery release honoring its achievements.

The benefits to the HHHobby and player base are SO BLATANTLY OBVIOUS that there's really no reason not to do this.

You forget the biggest rule of 40k: the story never moves. It's intentionally set at 1 second to midnight as set dressing, and to give you an excuse to push models about the table.

Stupid as it sounds... those would be two separate budgets.

GW not having advertising... ... ... Nope, that's still stupid. (Grow the hobby you morons! Don't scare them away with huge prices - bring new people in ! And you kids! Offa my lawn! *Waves fist.*)

The Auld Grump

Are there likely to be testimony transcripts at some point?

 Ouze wrote:
Are there likely to be testimony transcripts at some point?

I think I saw someone post around the start of the trial that they would likely be up after the verdict.

So, regardless of the outcome, do any of our lawyer-Dakka-ites have any comments on an appeal?

@privateer, how can you discuss an appeal, when the decision hasn't been made yet. Let's not count chickens just yet.

@Kilkrazy, do we know if they even looked?

Cheers

Andrew

 AndrewC wrote:
@privateer, how can you discuss an appeal, when the decision hasn't been made yet. Let's not count chickens just yet.

@Kilkrazy, do we know if they even looked?

Cheers

Andrew

That's just the way the America courts work. If GW loses, I'd wager that they will appeal. If CHS loses, and the lawyers are still willing to work pro bono, there will be an appeal.
Discussing an appeal now is no different than discussing what you might have for dessert before you know where you're going for dinner; there will be a lot of speculation and guessing, and much of it will be suppositional, but you can get a good idea of who will do what, just based on the information you have in front of you.

Eric

Without knowing what the rulings are, though, it's impossible to guess the grounds for appeal. So while I suppose I could try and imagine all possible grounds...I'd rather wait a couple weeks and see what the actual situation is first.

I think there are procedural grounds and those grounds for appeal are pretty simple. CHS' products should have been allowed to be compared physically and directly in the forms they're physically sold to what they were alleged to have infringed as a matter of the normal procedure for this type of dispute. Instead the judge has only allowed a comparison of CHS website photos to GWs provided images. Meanwhile GW is pursuing claims that both products and images were separate and distinct infringements but in the absence of the physical model comparison the juries determination could be ruled only applicable to the website photos. That is to say by GW preventing that comparison they by default failed to meet their burden of proof against the product lines themselves.

At the end of the day GW may win, but that win would be limited to taking down images from a website that has since already removed many of those images in question.

 AndrewC wrote:
@privateer, how can you discuss an appeal, when the decision hasn't been made yet. Let's not count chickens just yet.

@Kilkrazy, do we know if they even looked?

Cheers

Andrew

I don't, but my guess is they didn't look very hard, owing to the following reasons:

1. GW's legal apparatus has been revealed by these proceedings to be very shonky. It would not surprise me if they simply didn't think of looking for their own expert witness.

2. If they did think of it, I reckon it would be very hard to find an expert in historical and SF armour forms who would with a straight face argue that the SM shoulder pad is an independent original creation. Just my opinion, of course.

ClockworkZion wrote:
Let's be honest here, anyone who has seen GW's past attempts at television adverts knows that GW and television ads don't mix.

The Hero Quest board game ad from ages ago is entirely the reason I'm in the hobby.

"I'll use my Broadsword!"
"Fire of Wrath!"

The problem there is it was not GW's ad, but Hasbro's, IIRC.
Still no GW ads on TV.

 Skinnereal wrote:
The problem there is it was not GW's ad, but Hasbro's, IIRC.
Still no GW ads on TV.

Then whose ad would this be exactly?




Like I mentioned before GW's ad attempts were never really that good.

I'll preempt the scary red writing with a reminder about topic folks! Until the trial started, everybody had done a really good job of keeping on track, in the last few weeks I think the mods have been very restrained about some of the tangents that have cropped up recently. I would have fired off a rant about some of the irrelevant stuff being posted if it wouldn't drag things further off topic.

Skinnereal wrote:The problem there is it was not GW's ad, but Hasbro's, IIRC.
Still no GW ads on TV.

Milton Bradley, not Hasbro.

I don't suppose anyone has heard who has been testifying over the last three days, have they? If I'm not mistaken, shouldn't this be CHS Defence Week in the courtroom?

 MagickalMemories wrote:

 AndrewC wrote:
@privateer, how can you discuss an appeal, when the decision hasn't been made yet. Let's not count chickens just yet.

@Kilkrazy, do we know if they even looked?

Cheers

Andrew

That's just the way the America courts work. If GW loses, I'd wager that they will appeal. If CHS loses, and the lawyers are still willing to work pro bono, there will be an appeal.
Discussing an appeal now is no different than discussing what you might have for dessert before you know where you're going for dinner; there will be a lot of speculation and guessing, and much of it will be suppositional, but you can get a good idea of who will do what, just based on the information you have in front of you.

Eric

Yup. There's no guarantee any of this is over once the decision has been made in the case.
In fact, for a client with deep enough pockets I understand it's not unusual to keep the appeal process going in hopes of getting the answer you're after----or so I've heard.

You think getting this case to trial took a long time? Wait and see what happens if there are appeals in the case.

privateer4hire wrote:
Yup. There's no guarantee any of this is over once the decision has been made in the case.
In fact, for a client with deep enough pockets I understand it's not unusual to keep the appeal process going in hopes of getting the answer you're after----or so I've heard.

You think getting this case to trial took a long time? Wait and see what happens if there are appeals in the case.

The Federal Appeals process is actually fairly speedy by comparison - usually, 18 months or so after the trial for an appropriate ruling. You can try appealing from that, but it's a long shot (as the full Appeals court/Supreme Court don't have to take up an appeal).

Now granted, sometimes that ruling involves returning to the trial court for additional proceedings.

Remanded, right?