
Jury in Apple v. Samsung Goofed, Damages Reduced; What's Wrong With this Picture - GICodeWarrior
http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=2012082510525390
======
VanL
What people who have not been in court don't realize is that Apple won on the
narrative. Find the good guy, find the bad guy, and the bad guy will almost
always be found to "lose."

Many times, patent cases are argued like someone was trespassing: This idea is
my property, and you started using it. What Apple did well in this trial is
that it portrayed Samsung as a cheater—someone who looked over Apple's
shoulder and copied down its answers. This portrayal obviously resonated with
the jury leading to the overwhelming win.

Is that right? No, not really, especially for technical issues. Frankly, the
most astounding part of this decision was that Samsung's standard-essential
patents were not considered infringed. I fully expect Samsung to file (and
win) a JNOV (a judgment notwithstanding the verdict) on that issue. But
overall, I doubt this verdict will be overturned as a whole.

~~~
taligent
Staggering how much ignorance there is about this case:

1) It was NOT TECHNICAL. It was predominately a lawsuit about trade dress and
UI driven patent infringement. It is exactly the same as judging whether a
Nike shoe has been copied or not. You don't need to understand the
technicalities of the manufacturing process.

2) The Samsung standards essential patents WERE considered valid and
infringed. Just that due to patent exhaustion Apple was exempt from
infringement.

So maybe you should understand the very basics of the case first.

~~~
VanL
Umm, you are mistaken. Yes, they found there was patent exhaustion. They also
found that the patents were not infringed.

Exhaustion is a _completely separate_ issue from infringement.

~~~
cube13
If they found that there was patent exhaustion, Apple could not have been
guilty of infringing on the patents.

The exhaustion doctrine is pretty clear on this.

~~~
VanL
Patent exhaustion is about liability for infringement, not infringement
itself.

------
doktrin
_Hogan holds patents, so he took us through his experience. After that it was
easier.

...we debated that first patent -- what was prior art -- because we had a hard
time believing there was no prior art, that there wasn't something out there
before Apple.

"In fact we skipped that one," Ilagan continued, "so we could go on faster. It
was bogging us down."_

This, as well as other accounts on groklaw, give the distinct impression that
this jury was _very much_ led by the foreman - both procedurally and
intellectually. The latter being a little worrisome.

Additionally, the mention that they glossed over their debate on prior art
because it was _slowing them down_ is disturbing.

I suppose since they had, according to this juror, essentially made up their
minds on day 2 - there was no need to get bogged down in these pesky details.

~~~
ChuckMcM
I expect Samsung's lawyers will focus some effort on this, the Foreman set him
self up as an unacknowledged expert witness. And if the Jury member's
statements are strictly correct, then a lawyer would argue that the Jury
debate was tampered by evidence that was not introduced at trial. Judges go
out of their way to point out to Jurors that the job requires considering just
the evidence that was presented at trial and nothing else (which is why
evidence rules see a lot of fireworks).

So the argument will go, this juror set their self up as an expert in the
minds of the other jurors, gave testimony (evidence) on the veracity or
relevance of the evidence presented, and that materially influenced the
verdict. The client, Samsung, was denied due process because the were not
allowed to cross examine this testimony.

Now it sounds simple but its not really as simple as that, because the Jury is
expected to debate the evidence and trade opinions on whether or not they
believed it. So what the lawyers would need to prove is that by creating the
impression of being an expert, this jurors opinions carried undue weight with
the other jurors and rose to the level of effectively new testimony. Its hard
to prove a jury tampered with itself :-). I've got a fuzzy memory of something
like this being pursued in either the Enron case ore of the AT&T cases but
sadly I don't have access to Lexis.

More likely the speed of the verdict and the inconsistencies in the verdict
will be sufficient for the court to take some action.

I do know that there will more motions and what not but I am not at all
comfortable predicting the outcome :-)

------
algolicious
This is one of the best critiques so far of the decision.

There are two sides to this trial. On the one side is the emotional appeal:
Samsung copied Apple, and documents detail the extent to which Samsung
imitated the iPhone. On the other side are the various technical ways in which
Apple claimed that Samsung copied them. But just as Apple engineers slaved for
years over the technical details of the iPhone, it is incredibly important for
the future of mobile innovation that all of the technical parts of the trial
are correctly decided. If the jury finds no infringement but finds that
infringement was induced, this indicates that technical mistakes were made.
But in particular, I wonder if the jury was so swayed by the emotional appeal
that sufficient attention was paid to the substantial prior art demonstrated
regarding capacitive touch screen phones and multitouch displays.

~~~
hahainternet
According to the comments in the post, this is one of the infringements:
[http://androidheadlines.com/wp-
content/uploads/2010/07/thumb...](http://androidheadlines.com/wp-
content/uploads/2010/07/thumb_550_ip4-vs-captivate.jpg)

If this is true, then it's hard to give this decision much weight at all.
These two phones are vastly different and one literally says _SAMSUNG_ on the
front.

~~~
esolyt
Just to remove all doubts about whether the jury was smoking crack or not,
this phone is found to be infringing the iPhone's design patents:

[http://androidspin.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/10/samsung-
ga...](http://androidspin.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/10/samsung-galaxy-s-
epic-4g-sprint-front-landscape.jpg)

~~~
mbreese
Close the keyboard, then look at it. The jury, apparently, decided what their
criteria were for infringement and then applied those criteria to all of the
phones. The extra fact that this model had a keyboard wasn't one of the
criteria.

Let's not assume that we have the whole story behind the way the jury decided
anything, one way or the other.

~~~
eridius
Also, I thought the design of the home screen (a grid of icons with labels)
also had something to do with it? Both of the linked phones have a grid very
much like the iPhone.

~~~
magicalist
icon grids predate the iphone, of course (windows mobile, palm pilot,
newton?). I think Apple's claims were more specific, dealing with particular
icons, colors, and the favorite apps at the bottom.

~~~
DanBC
Did 16x16 (and then 32x32, and etc etc) icons get patents? Because someone,
somewhere, lost a lot of money - and I got consistently sized icons for many
years.

EDIT: This isn't as ridiculous as it sounds. See this 2002 article. BT
registered a patent in 1976 for "double clicking hyperlinks" (or somesuch),
and then in 2000 they realised that they owned this patent, and a bunch of
people were clicking hyperlinks on the WWW, and they started suing people.
They lost.

([http://www.computerweekly.com/feature/BT-patent-case-
raises-...](http://www.computerweekly.com/feature/BT-patent-case-raises-e-
commerce-planning-issues))

(<http://eupat.ffii.org/pikta/xrani/hyperlink/>)

------
YooLi
Even if the jury took a month and asked 1000 questions, the losing side or
those who align with the losing side would find something, no matter how
minute, to question the decision.

~~~
eevilspock
The fact that your valid opinion got downvoted shows that the problem may not
be an emotionally biased jury in the courtroom so much as many emotionally
biased HN users.

~~~
veemjeem
Yeah, I feel like many HN readers think this is Apple vs Android, but it's
not. HN readers want to defend Android, so they feel this is the case where
Apple battles Android, but really the case has little to do with Android. In
most of the cases where Samsung copies Apple, the Android default
implementation would have prevented that. Android handsets usually have a
micro usb connector, but Samsung chose to copy Apple's 30 pin connector over
the Android default. Why would anyone do that unless they wanted to clone
Apple?

~~~
danielweber
Was it plug-compatible with Apple's connector? That would seem open-and-shut
for infringement. I thought it just looked similar, which makes it a judgment
call for a jury.

I could accept most of what Samsung did as a technical choice, but that power
charger really leaped out at me. Proprietary chargers suck for end users.

~~~
catch23
It's similar, but not exact. You can actually plug the galaxy into apple addon
products (the connector will fit), but you'll probably fry your galaxy. Maybe
someone has already done this and complained to Apple.

However, even if the copy was exact, I think it would still be difficult to
make the case for infringement.

~~~
dubya
It's a mirrored version of Apple's connector. This was an especially goofy
choice, as there's already a standard called PDMI they could have used.

There's a detailed discussion here:
<http://www.pocketables.com/forum//showthread.php?p=55941>

------
eevilspock
Samsung's own words:

 _The verdict form in this complex case necessarily spans 20 pages and
requires unanimous answers to more than 500 discrete questions across 5
different legal disciplines. (Dtk. No. 1890.) The likelihood of an
inconsistent verdict is a possibility despite the jury’s best efforts._

"DESPITE THE JURY'S BEST EFFORTS"

Groklaw even linked to the source of the above quote:
<http://www.groklaw.net/pdf3/ApplevSamsung-1927.pdf>

Seems like a classic case of confirmation bias, by both Groklaw as well as a
bunch of people here.

~~~
learc83
The argument is that they didn't make their _best effort_ , because they
couldn't have possibly done so in only 3 days.

~~~
mbreese
To be honest though, a lot of the questions were checkboxes. Did this device
infringe, Y/N...

Once they had their criteria for evaluating infringement, they could hammer
through the devices pretty quickly. I suspect that most of the deliberation
was on if the patents were valid or not. If so, how then to evaluate if a
device infringed?

I'm more curious to know how they determined damages... it seems like there
should be a worksheet or something on that.

~~~
learc83
There's no way of knowing, but having served on a jury where the foreman was a
lawyer (he only handled civil cases), I think the most likely scenario was
that most of the jurors just followed his lead.

People tend to defer to perceived experts, which is why I find it odd
Samsung's attorneys didn't catch this guy.

~~~
danielweber
If they didn't know about him, they were incompetent.

More likely, they knew about him and made a bet he would side with them. They
were wrong.

~~~
einhverfr
I read once about a case where the foreman on the jury (in a personal injury
suit) was both a lawyer and a state senator. The judgement was set aside on
the basis that he exercised undue influence by explaining the law to other
jurors (thus usurping the judge's role).

Of course the law is full of funny cases (like the time the Supreme Court
filed a per curiam, and then along with it a unanimous partial concurrence).
Figuring out what was meant there is... well, something lawyers can argue
about forever.

------
sriramk
I was surprised by the resumes of the people on the jury given the flack
they've received from the tech press. These were some very qualified people,
much more so than the tech press that criticized them.

[http://news.cnet.com/8301-13579_3-57500358-37/exclusive-
appl...](http://news.cnet.com/8301-13579_3-57500358-37/exclusive-apple-
samsung-juror-speaks-out/)

~~~
Sambdala
The foreman holds a patent that could be the poster child for what's wrong
with the software patent industry.

Being a Very Serious Person(tm) in an area that most people, who are paying
attention, think has gone insane is generally not the kind of credential that
should make people give your opinion more credence.

~~~
sriramk
I would think you would want someone who actually understands the patent
system and the patent process on the jury of a landmark patent trial.

~~~
novalis
To hold a patent doesn't qualify one to automagically understand the patent
system and the patent process. Or in the case of this jury, to be able to
redact error free concensus from the group. The fact that one person on that
jury has a patent on a "Method and apparatus for recording and storing video
information" is a really disturbing factor that might explain a lot on how the
jury deliberated.

~~~
ChuckMcM
This. At one time I had over a dozen patents where I was one of the inventors
and every time I find something new about the patent system. I've got the
bonus education in having been retained as an expert witness in two patent
cases, which nominally would qualify me as an expert and I find the system
quite murky still. I can categorically concur that just having at patent does
_not_ make you an expert on the _patent system_.

------
eridius
I don't understand why everybody keeps saying that a win for Apple is a blow
for innovation. Samsung didn't innovate. They flat-out copied. Seems to me
that allowing blatant copying like this is what will suppress innovation,
because why bother spending 5 years and a lot of effort/money designing
something awesome if someone else can come along and clone your product in 3
months?

~~~
ChuckMcM
Its a question of scope. There are a lot of patents in this case that a
majority of engineers or designers would not consider worthy of patent
protection, the most infamous being the 'rounded corners' one. That these
patents were upheld then has a huge chilling effect on everyone's design. Can
I be sued because my device is rectangular? How about square? Are all
quadrilaterals covered? Those are ridiculous questions on their face, but
you've just seen someone who got hit with a billion dollar judgement and you
can't tell that they did anything wrong, and it paralyzes you.

 _That_ is why its a blow for innovation. All the rabbits will freeze hoping
the hunter can't see them.

~~~
catch23
No, it's not a blow to innovation. The only reason Apple went after Samsung
and not HTC or other Android handset manufacturers is because Samsung has gone
into detail copying every small feature from Apple. If you look into Samsung's
prior history, you'll see they do this for every popular product on the market
-- it's part of their business model, and it's not focused specifically on
copying Apple. They copied Motorola products before the iPhone came on the
scene. The details of the blatant copying are addressed in that 127 page
"smoking gun" that was released recently.

I think businesses that focus on cloning other people's successful products
actually reduce innovation because the innovation comes from the initial
product inception, not from a copy. If cloning actually increased innovation,
we should be seeing lots of innovative products come out of china since
they're so good at making copies of other people's products.

~~~
ChuckMcM
Are you saying that now that this case is 'over' and Apple won it, they won't
sue anyone else on the same patents? If so I think that is pretty naive. If
you look at other cases you will see that Apple will be compelled to sue
everyone else, and/or get a license from them for these patents. If they did
not do that then Samsung would be able to argue that Apple didn't really
believe in their patents, they were just trying to put Samsung out of
business. That at least is well understood, you can lose the protection of
your trademarks or design patents if you don't enforce them.

~~~
catch23
Sadly, the case is far from over. Both companies will say they will appeal
until they win so it may last as long as SCO vs IBM. From Apple's statement, I
believe they went after Samsung because of their blatant copying. There have
been other manufacturers that Apple have not gone after because the copying
was not as significant as Samsung's.

Personally, I think someone has to reprimand companies that make a business
out of cloning others. It happens all the time, but it's often hard to
enforce.

I think you're one of those HN readers that think this is Apple vs Android,
but really it's a case against Samsung and their cloning behavior. Few
companies out there act like Samsung and get away with it.

Also, I think you're a bit extreme in your arguments. Apple is not going to
put Samsung out of business; Samsung makes everything from air conditioning
units to memory chips.

~~~
ChuckMcM
Perhaps we're talking past each other.

"Personally, I think someone has to reprimand companies that make a business
out of cloning others. It happens all the time, but it's often hard to
enforce."

It is the nature of free market economies that successful products will get
emulated. Compaq emulating the IBM PC, Char-Broil emulating the Weber griil,
Ford emulating the Toyota Camry, Microsoft emulating Netscape, Apple emulating
the Xerox windowing system, Burger King emulating McDonalds, Airbus emulating
Boeing, it just goes on and on. That is what is generally referred to as
competition, sort of "if you thing you can do it better, then bring it on."

And within that competition there are often signature "styles" which are
distinctive to a company, so it would probably have been a bad idea if Airbus
had given their A380 a 'hump' on the front like the Boeing 747. And there is a
whole bunch or case law about what is and what is not acceptable.

The question on trial here was did Samsung cross the line in emulating Apple
products. As you know, those of us outside the courtroom had access to all of
the arguments and evidence about whether or not Samsung copied too much, or if
Apple was accusing Samsung of copying their own copied work. The judge in this
case emasculated Samsung's argument by denying the admittance of evidence
which had exonerated them in other courts.

A number of folks (and I'm one of them) feel that many of the claims in
Apple's design patents were flawed by both being obvious and there being prior
art to indicate that any ordinary person skilled in the art who was given the
task could have independently arrived at the same design elements.

So some folks, like me, don't think Samsung got a fair trial. That's just
opinion of course and they've got one of, if not the top IP Litigation Firm
working for them so if you can't get a fair trial (opinion) with Quinn
Emmanuel, well it doesn't bode well for anyone.

So if you are a designer at a start-up, or even at a reasonably sized company,
and your company is trying to compete against a market leading product that
you think you can do better. But given that you now know that you can make no
assumptions about what is 'fair use' or 'prior art' or 'obvious' you might be
inclined to believe that if you made a device that had icons and made phone
calls you were infringing on some random Apple patent and would get yourself
sued out of existence. You see the way Samsung got treated and you say "Crap
even if I've got a friggin' article in the New York times that pre-dates their
patent they will figure out some way to keep that out of the trial and _still_
kill me."

We can debate all day about whether or not Apple would do that to our hapless
designer _we know they just did that to Samsung_ so we know its possible. And
if you are putting the company at risk by getting near that Apple monster your
Board of Directors will fire you faster than a guy who lied about his degree
on a resume. That is the way that intimidation works, the US Gov't hasn't used
nuclear weapons in anger in nearly 70 years but they did that one time.

You claimed that this case was not 'a blow to innovation', I rebutted that by
saying that the chilling effects of this case would lead to significantly less
innovation. If you want to argue your case you have to show how people can
continue to innovate in the smart phone space and defend themselves against a
litigious competitor like Apple has been shown to be. And part of that
rebuttal has to be some compelling narrative about how the trial was 'fair'.
That, for me is a hard one to get past.

~~~
catch23
There are great examples of innovative products that are the result of not
copying another -- see the windows & palm phones. I don't believe that
innovation comes from cloning -- it only helps that business stay alive for a
longer period of time, but doesn't bring anything new to the table. The
examples of emulation you provide are significantly less blatant than the way
Samsung copies Apple. Samsung even uses Apple icons as part of their wallpaper
at their own "white" brick & mortar stores. Even when products emulate one
another, it's usually possible for the end consumer to differentiate between
the two, however Samsung has gone an extra step to make it difficult.

I'm not sure I understand why you think the trial was unfair -- it was a jury
who made this decision, and the jury consisted of untechnical people who would
be the right types of people to make this decision. If the average Joe thinks
that the Toyota is the Ford, then I think it goes beyond the line of
emulation.

I would say HTC emulates Apple products, but does not clone the same way
Samsung clones. For example, the boxes for HTC phones look nothing like
Apple's, and the connector is the same micro usb everyone is familiar with.
Samsung goes the extra step to make sure their brick and mortar store, the
boxes, the connector, the interfaces, the keyboard, the genius bar, the
physical phone, etc are all indistinguishable from Apple. I don't understand
why Samsung would have to make their brick & mortar stores identical to Apple,
and even have the same style of genius bar inside -- that's going an extra
step to make a product identical. In the countries where the name "genius bar"
is not a registered trademark, Samsung actually uses that exact name. For the
countries that have the registered trademark, they call them smart tutors.
It's crazy how deep the copying goes.

My hunch is that ethics in that region are a bit more "loose" than they are
here. It's perfectly okay to butt-in line there, or cheat in certain
situations. When I was there, I'd stand in line at the hotel like a typical
westerner (even though I'm chinese) only to have people butt in front me every
5 minutes. Eventually I just forced my way in front of the line to speak to
the receptionist. I asked why they butt in front of me and they replied "you
let me". Old people there are even less respectful, they just don't care you
exist. All of my relatives who went to school in china lied about their age so
they would have an advantage by starting at a lower grade level than the
proper age. I've been told this happens in Korea and Japan as well.

When does a company go beyond emulation and into cloning? Would you say
something like this is okay: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4426835> ?

~~~
doktrin
>> _the jury consisted of untechnical people who would be the right types of
people to make this decision. If the average Joe thinks that the Toyota is the
Ford, then I think it goes beyond the line of emulation._

Demonstrably false. The foreman, for instance, is the owner of a patent for a
variant of DVR ("Method and apparatus for recording and storing video
information").

>> _Old people there are even less respectful, they just don't care you
exist._

Agree to disagree.

>> _Samsung even uses Apple icons as part of their wallpaper at their own
"white" brick & mortar stores....I don't understand why Samsung would have to
make their brick & mortar stores identical to Apple, and even have the same
style of genius bar inside...In the countries where the name "genius bar" is
not a registered trademark, Samsung actually uses that exact name. For the
countries that have the registered trademark, they call them smart tutors.
It's crazy how deep the copying goes._

You seem to think that this judgment is "fair" because Samsung is a "bad
cloning company". That's fine, and you are entitled to your opinion. Please
understand that their evilness is not really central here.

I don't think anyone here is arguing that Samsung is a particularly innovative
company. However, their brick & mortar stores have very little bearing on
whether or not UI elements in rows of 4 consist of an infringement on Apple's
IP. Routinely bringing up their company (or country's) culture as an example
for how terrible they are is essentially an ad hominem attack.

The fact is that the court did come down _strongly_ in Apple's favor, and
ruled that _quite innocuous and non-obvious_ elements of Samsung's design were
an infringement of Apple's IP. How anyone can think that this may not have far
reaching implications for technological innovation is beyond me.

------
esolyt
"In fact we skipped that one," Ilagan continued, "so we could go on faster. It
was bogging us down."

Incredible.

~~~
mbreese
What is so incredible? If you run into a question that is slowing you down,
why not skip it, and get back to it later? In the case of a jury, you may even
find that you didn't have to decide in the first place, because the issue may
be moot by the time you get back to it.

There isn't enough context in the quote here to tell what went on.

~~~
esolyt
Sorry, I should have made the context clearer.

They never went back to the issue later. They were discussing whether a
specific Apple patent should be invalidated because of the prior art. They
were sick of dicussing it, so they just moved on. Hence, the patent was not
invalidated.

~~~
mbreese
I'm saying that we the news posts that we currently have don't give us enough
context... the cnet post [1] doesn't explicitly say that they never went back
to it. They explicitly decided that the patent was infringed, so they must
have had _some_ further discussions. From the article, though, it's hard to
determine which patent they were talking about - likely '381.

[1] [http://news.cnet.com/8301-13579_3-57500358-37/exclusive-
appl...](http://news.cnet.com/8301-13579_3-57500358-37/exclusive-apple-
samsung-juror-speaks-out/)

~~~
ncallaway
I agree with you that the article doesn't give enough context. We can't know
whether or not the jury came back to it. Though, by the same token I find your
assumption that "they must have had _some_ further discussions" to be spurious
for the same reasons. You're both reading assumptions into the quote.

The fact is, we can't really know whether they came back to it or not unless
they tell us. I'm basically advocating that we can't assume the _did_ or _did
not_ come back to it.

------
jedbrown
What do others think of Hogan's patent?

<http://www.google.com/patents/US7352953>

It strikes me as just recording video and doing the standard things that
people do with digital video.

~~~
danielweber
Oh, good, a lynch mob to attack the foreman's professional work.

~~~
harshreality
More like a demonstration of just what kind of flawed mindset he may have on
patents, given that he holds such a silly patent.

It appears to be, essentially, a DVR patent. I'm very concerned with his
ability to handle a case like this since he thought something very similar to
a TIVO (1999) was patentable when his patent was filed in 2002.

~~~
mturmon
Did Samsung get a chance to reject jurors in a voir dire process, as one does
for a criminal trial? If so, it's hard to complain about the jurors after the
fact.

------
jongraehl
The tl;dr jury: decided all 700 questions in 21 hours (time to read aloud all
108 pages, sure, but to understand and reach consensus?)

From the groklaw article:

> If it would take a lawyer three days to make sure he understood the terms in
> the form, how did the jury not need the time to do the same? There were 700
> questions, remember, and one thing is plain, that the jury didn't take the
> time to avoid inconsistencies

> Had they read the full jury instructions, all 109 pages, they would have
> read that damages are not supposed to punish, merely to compensate for
> losses.

------
simplexion
Stop supporting a particular company. The Appletards are worse but you all
need to quit it. Apple copied the LG Prada when they made the iPhone and good
on them. They helped move mobile devices forward and I now have a huge choice
of amazing portable entertainment devices. This lawsuit is moronic.

------
keithpeter
UK comment: members of the jury _giving interviews_ that include _descriptions
of their deliberations_. I find this system amazing.

[http://www.direct.gov.uk/en/CrimeJusticeAndTheLaw/Juryservic...](http://www.direct.gov.uk/en/CrimeJusticeAndTheLaw/Juryservice/DG_196118)

~~~
danielweber
If a jury member volunteers information, I think that's fine. In fact, it's
how we can learn about things like a jury failing do to its duty. (NB: I am
not saying that happened in this case.)

I do worry that jury members' names are not kept secret. They are being asked
to make what is possibly a very unpopular decision and shouldn't have to worry
about what strangers think about them.

~~~
vacri
Read the link under 'responsibilities' - in the UK you can't even discuss the
deliberation process with your own family, even after the court case is
concluded.

------
nestlequ1k
I don't think there's ever been a patent lawsuit where I didn't root for the
person being sued.

If someone sued North Korea for patent infringement, I'd root for North Korea
to win.

It's a joke of a system, unfortunately too much money is being made by the
lawyers for there to be any change anytime soon.

------
larrydavid
That site is such a massive eyesore, to the point where I struggle to have any
motivation to read past the first paragraph.

Colors, typography, the massive line-lengths. It's a wall of text. Just an
all-round horrible design.

~~~
jlgreco
Frankly if walls of text can turn you off something, you are probably not
Groklaw's intended audience in the first place.

------
bsaul
Not a law expert, so my way to look at it is simply : \- did samsung become
number 1 smartphone seller with an original product or by copying apple work ?
Obviously, yes ( and i'm talking memory here, the first time i saw a galaxy i
took it for an iphone). \- is it fair they pay something to apple for it ? Yes
\- is 1 billion $ fair ? Judging by market size and profits made by samsung,
it doesn't seem an absurd amount. That's all we should matter.

~~~
tobiasSoftware
Nope, that's not all that should matter. The reason is copyright vs. patents.
Both are made to prevent copying but in different ways. Copyright says this
product is not copyable. Patents say this aspect of the product is not
copyable. HUGE difference. Now in this case Apple used several patents to act
similarly to a copyright. The difference is that these patents were found
valid meaning that if your product infringes even ONE of them, you can get
sued big time. So if you create a product with rounded corners you could get
sued, even if you didn't copy apple at all. Should Samsung get sued and pay $1
billion for copying Apple? Probably. Should Samsung get sued using individual
aspects like having rounded corners? Definitely not, considering now several
companies who have done nothing wrong will be liable.

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hermannj314
This is the quality of work you get when you pay $20 a day.

The lawyers for both sides are making more per hour than the entire jury per
day. What kind of performance do they expect?

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misterbee
The payment for jury duty is "the rights and privileges of US citizenship".
It's a civic duty, not a work-for-hire.

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antman
Can somebody calculate the probability of assigning a jury foreman, on a very
important case, whether a patent is crazy and then finding out he has a crazy
patent himself? Life is full of coincidences hard to believe.

