> So often in reading those transcripts I wanted to grab one of the lawyers and scream in his face, "you idiot!! What the hell is wrong with you?!? Are you stupid????"
I can think of a couple of reasons that don't involve lawyers being stupid:
1. If the truth is against a client's interest, a lawyer is probably going to try to confuse the issue as much as possible (unless it seems tactically unwise for other reasons, of course).
2. IIRC, they were stuck with some bad precedent to work with (especially with respect to APIs). That meant they were often arguing issues in a broken frame, rather than from first principles. My understanding is they can't effectively make the first-principles argument until the appeals get to the court that created the precedent in the first place (or higher).
I can think of a couple of reasons that don't involve lawyers being stupid:
1. If the truth is against a client's interest, a lawyer is probably going to try to confuse the issue as much as possible (unless it seems tactically unwise for other reasons, of course).
2. IIRC, they were stuck with some bad precedent to work with (especially with respect to APIs). That meant they were often arguing issues in a broken frame, rather than from first principles. My understanding is they can't effectively make the first-principles argument until the appeals get to the court that created the precedent in the first place (or higher).