When Carter Phillips and Seth Waxman, two titans of the U.S. Supreme Court bar, both want to argue the same side of a case, what are you going to do? You do what the National Football League does every game: flip a coin.

A coin toss this week determined which of the two advocates will argue on Feb. 23 for the respondents in the closely watched patent infringement cases Stryker v. Zimmer and Halo Electronics v. Pulse Electronics.