Petteri Pyyny
21 Jun 2001 0:34
A U.S. District Court judge declared a mistrial Tuesday in a case of MP3.com versus TVT. TVT sued MP3.com over copyright violations -- on same basis as other record companies did.
The reason for mistrial is funny -- bad math :-) Jury found MP3.com guilty to charges in April and awarded TVT less than $300,000. Jury actually meant to award near $3M to TVT - one juror apparently made an error while calculating the damages on her Palm. Other jurors did not notice the mistake until they saw media reports on the case later in the day.
"The American jury system may yield countless benefits, but in this case it produced an uncounted, and unaccountable, result," wrote Judge Rakoff, in an opinion issued late Tuesday.