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Technology boom prompts calls for specialized court

By David Williams
CNN.com Writer

ATLANTA, Georgia (CNN) -- The high-tech world moves much faster than the judicial system, leaving judges to wrangle with issues that didn't exist a few short years ago.

Recent cases involving online music services Napster and MP3.com and a hacker magazine that published computer codes that can be used to copy DVD movies have raised new questions about how existing copyright and intellectual property rights will deal with the Internet.

The federal antitrust case against Microsoft has been extremely complicated, with months of testimony and thousands of documents related to innovations in Internet browser and operating systems technology.

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Judge Thomas Penfield Jackson, the district court judge who ruled that Microsoft abused its monopoly power, told The New York Times that he backed a proposal by the Justice Department and state attorneys general to break up the software giant because "there's no way I can equip myself to do a better job than they have done."

The decision to break up the company came almost three years after the government brought its lawsuit against Microsoft, and there is no way to predict how long the appeals process will take.

The Supreme Court voted September 26 against hearing an expedited appeal and sent the case to the U.S Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia.

Supreme Court Associate Justice Stephen Breyer dissented, arguing that "the case significantly affects an important sector of the economy - a sector characterized by rapid technological change. Speed in reaching a final decision may help create legal certainty. That certainty, in turn, may further the economic development of that sector so important to our Nation's prosperity."

Maryland is considering setting up a special court division to handle complicated business and technology cases. The state legislature set up a task force in April to study the best way to set up the court.

Task force chairman Wilbur Preston believes it is important to have judges with specialized knowledge of technology issues.

"Obviously, everybody would be more comfortable if the judge understood the technology, I would think," Preston said.

He said the division also would also help streamline the court system.

"The idea is that complex business cases involving thousands of documents and all kinds of records only tie up the regular court system, and if you have a specialist court that can handle those things quickly and efficiently, and bring them to trial quickly or provide some sort of alternative dispute... a specialist court like that could free up the rest of the legal system," Preston said.

Preston said about a dozen states have set up business courts to handle complex cases and that Pennsylvania and New York report positive results so far.

Maryland is the first state to propose creation of a court to handle both business and technology cases.

Not everyone on the task force supports setting up the new division.

Circuit Court Judge Steven Platt said creating separate divisions could reduce the court system's flexibility.

"We're opposed to dividing resources that are already scarce when you can train judges to hear a variety of cases," Platt said.

Platt said he is in favor of having a corps judges who are trained to handle complicated business and technological cases, but he thinks they should also hear regular cases when their docket is empty.

"The question is, do you segregate judges and have them hear only one type of case, even if they don't have anything to do," Platt said.

Preston said there is no way to estimate how many cases the business and technology court would handle.

The task force is expected to issue its report December 1.

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