To put everyone on notice: The method of conducting a mock trial has been patented. The patent, No. 6,607,389, claims priority to a 2001 provisional filing date. The novel portion of the claim appears to be that both the stricken and not-stricken members of the jury pool hear the case. Claim 1 reads as follows:
1. A method of conducting a mock trial exercise . . . comprising:
- assembling an initial pool of potential mock jurors;
- questioning members of the initial pool . . .;
- striking members of the initial pool for cause . . .;
- permitting the attorney[s]to make a number of peremptory strikes of members of the initial pool . . .;
- assembling a probable jury comprising members of the initial pool not struck;
- assembling a stricken jury comprising members of the initial pool struck;
- presenting [at least a summary of the case] to both the probable jury and the stricken jury.
The patent was awarded to Dr. Louis Genevie, founder of Litigation Strategies, a New York jury research and consulting firm. Thanks to Dan Ravicher at PubPat for showing me this one.