Delaney’s words emerged as if dragged from deep underwater: “Mr. Roma, I’m just a programmer. My understanding of that decision is limited to the guidelines it imposed on my workflows.”

Roma pounced, his voice rising: “And as a programmer, what would you say was the main guideline imposed by corporate regarding this landmark decision?”

“I… I suppose it was to document workflow processes, and to give potential algorithms a… unique fingerprint of sorts.”

MR. DELANEY!” Roma thundered, the sound splitting the room, making several jurors physically recoil. “Is that because in Eeogle v. MLopen, the courts decided that ‘products produced by non-public weights have been deemed non-patentable, as the indication of source is unknown and therefore not fully described and enabled’?”

The gallery collectively suspened its breath. A law student’s water bottle slipped from nerveless fingers, the soft thud echoing like artillery fire in the frozen silence.

“That’s a little above my pay grade, Mr. Ro… ”

“What I’m saying, Mr. Delaney,” Roma cut through the air between them like a scalpel, “is… did you yourself write every line of code you’re claiming moral rights over?” He paused briefly before continuing. “Or did you have it potentially ‘transformed’ in some way where you weren’t the one paying full… ‘attention’?” As he uttered the word, his fingers rose in exaggerated quotations, emphasizing the term with a knowing swagger.

“Objection!” Juniper’s voice cracked with barely contained panic. Her chair clattering backwards with enough force to make the court reporter look up from her stenotype… a breach of protocol that said everything. “Any code in question constitutes derivative works from Juisys LLC’s codebase predating Eeogle v. MLopen. The question is fundamentally invalid!”