Presenting Documents at the Hearing

• Author: David A. Allgeyer
• Pages: 83-88

83

Presenting Documents

atthe Hearing

Obsessing over how you present documents at the hearing may

seem a little mundane. It isn’t. It can have a signif‌icant effect on

the eff‌iciency and effectiveness of the hearing.

Patent arbitration tends to be document heavy, so the cur-

rent technology available to present documents leads to many

possibilities. Here are a few thoughts on that from one arbitra-

tor’s point of view. Not all arbitrators will necessarily agree with

me on all this, but this ref‌lects what I have seen over the years.

PRESENTING WRITTEN DOCUMENTS

With the advent of TrialDirector® and other systems to present

documents electronically, it can be tempting to default to that

system for everything. I’m not sure it is worth the expense in

many cases. I am sure that, if done improperly, use of these sys-

tems can be a detriment rather than a benef‌it.

First let’s consider the benef‌its of trial presentation sys-

tems. These systems allow you to focus the witnesses’ and arbi-

trator’s attention on specif‌ic documents and passages in the

way you choose. You can project the page of the document, blow

up or highlight a particular passage of interest, and otherwise

direct everyone’s attention to the particular part of the docu-

ment you are working on. If done correctly, there is no need to

CHAPTER 13