For the first time in an Eastern District of Texas courtroom, jurors in a patent trial recently got to ask questions of witnesses.
It was an experiment that Chief U.S. District Judge Leonard Davis long had wanted to try in complicated patent litigation the type of case for which his jurisdiction is famous. Davis says he got the idea a year ago at a conference of chief U.S. district judges. He figured it was OK as long as letting jurors submit written questions for witnesses didn’t delay or complicate a patent trial.
