Court of Session goes high tech

New high definition visual equipment gets first use in civil case

News, 15 May 2006

New high definition visual equipment will be used for the first time in a civil case in Scotland this week.

Plasma screens have been fitted to the Court of Session in Edinburgh, enabling all those involved in court hearings to view evidence. The case, starting tomorrow (16 May), concerns a dispute over patented design of complex manufacturing machinery.

DVDs and computer generated animations of machinery in operation will be displayed more quickly and accurately using this new technology.

Colin Hulme, an associate in the dispute resolution department of Burness LLP, said: “I had explained to the court service our need for more advanced technology to present evidence in court.

"This project was already in the pipeline but implementation of it was accelerated to meet the specific needs of our patent trial. I hope the technology will enable us to better use valuable court time and thus the initial outlay on hardware will be recouped very quickly.”

"Fantastic resource"

He added: “There are more and more cases involving complex intellectual property or IT coming before the courts and having this new technology court in place will be a fantastic resource to assist the conduct of these cases.

"In other jurisdictions such as in Singapore they have paperless courts where every piece of paper evidence is displayed electronically. I expect that we will have similar methods of conducting litigation in Scotland within the next five or 10 years."

The next technology court is planned for Glasgow Sheriff Court and the technology is expected then to be rolled out across other sheriff courts in Scotland.

It will also be used to enable the Scottish Court Service to meet its obligations under the Vulnerable Witnesses (Scotland) Act 2004, which comes fully into effect in April 2007.