A judge, or panel of judges, decides such cases, and I believe that the ones who try patent cases are, generally speaking, reasonably competent (and thus much less likely to make the incontrovertible errors seen in the recent US Apple-Samsung case).
"lay juries" - A jurer is by definition a layman. If a jury was full of experts it would completely miss the point.
"incontrovertible errors" - I guess you are talking about the (relatively) tiny misappropriated damages? This was fixed at the time, and it was not denied or disputed. Wonder why you chose to qualify this as such and not provide any specifics?
Edit: clarity.
A juror is by definition a layman in America; however, other places do in fact exist, and there are and have been all sorts of qualifications for being on juries around the world.
Finally, you are right: it was indeed the impossible logic of the damage awards that makes it possible to just say it plain that the jury in that made a fast decision that was clearly (incontrovertibly) erroneous.
(I think that other aspects of the verdict also show incorrect understanding/thinking, but that discussion gets more nuanced.)
You don't need to defend yourself on this. Ever since the trial decision, Apple fanboys have been upset at people raining on their parade with facts. And there's certainly no shortage of Apple fanboys on HN.
I agree that the definition of a jury varies widely around the world, however this point was (in reference to your comparison) specific to the US trial.
With the decisions, why does it not cross your mind that they had actually plenty of time to make up their minds during the trial? Everybody seems to believe they should have been utterly impartial up to and including the point they were instructed by the judge, but these are human beings, jurors, and right or wrong they had plenty to time to come to conclusions, especially with the damning emails/documents from Samsung. Everybody is expecting a jury to have behaved like a well versed and highly trained expert lawyer.
So yes, even if they did show incorrect understanding this is completely irrelevant, they are not supposed to be the experts you think they should have been.
The "lay jury" in the USA Apple vs Samsung case where obviously a bunch of idiots, so if the "jury was full of experts" I suspect then may well have done a better job.
How can any competent jury in a patent law suit some how decide to ignore "prior art"!
Read for yourself: http://news.cnet.com/8301-13579_3-57500358-37/exclusive-appl...
Edit: From the link:
> After we debated that first patent -- what was prior art --because we had a hard time believing there was no prior art." "In fact we skipped that one," Ilagan continued, "so we could go on faster. It was bogging us down."
Edit: I believe the judge fixed the most egregious errors, but post-verdict interviews with the jury make it seem like they were confused on various different fronts.
Here's one link describing some of those problems: http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=2012082510525390
>"And in example after example, when we put it to the test, the older prior art was just that. Not that there's anything [wrong] with older prior art - but the key was that the hardware was different, the software was an entirely different methodology, and the more modern software could not be loaded onto the older example and be run without error."
Wut.
> > Do you think if you hadn't been on the jury then we might have ended up with a very different verdict?
> I think so. But let's not say me specifically.
I don't know offhand all of the distinctions here (I think one difference is lay judges decide both guilt/innocence and the sentence, if guilty) but I think the Japanese system pretty similar to what Americans would think of as a "jury".
Precisely speaking, however, they are indeed "lay judges".