Excerpted from SEAK’s Course: How to Excel as an Expert Witness in Patent Cases: Special Techniques
A trial process, plaintiff goes first, gets to put on their case. They explain why the patent’s infringed. Then the defendant comes up. Defendant says it’s not infringed and it’s invalid. Plaintiff gets to go up again and say the patent is valid, kind of rebutts the defense case. And that’s, you know, scheduling-wise, for you as an expert, that’s important to know. Because if you’re the plaintiff expert and you’re handling both infringement and validity, you’re there the whole week for trial. If you’re the defense expert, you can take off, essentially, after you testify. It’s a small thing but I find some experts don’t realize. They’ll do the first part where they’ll say why it’s infringed and then they’re ready to go home. And it’s like, ahh, you gotta stay another week because you’re testifying at the last day of court about why the patent is actually valid. And so, sometimes you split experts up, but if you’re doing both, you would be staying there for the whole process.