
Apple v. Samsung juror: we “wanted to send a message” - iProject
http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2012/08/apple-v-samsung-juror-describes-deliberations-we-wanted-to-send-a-message/
======
neya
I do not blame anyone, nor do I support anyone. My fair view is that Samsung
DID cross the border by making their phones look too similar to the
iPhone..BUT Apple shouldn't have won either, because what they have is a bunch
of Bullshit patents just to hinder their competitors' success. (Rounded
rectangles, Slide to unlock, Elastic bounce, seriously?)

One thing I can conclude honestly (also from my own personal experience) is
that we live in a very unfair world, being ruled by an unfair system, where
someone who has the highest amount money will always WIN and RULE the system.
Our governments are in bed with the entertainment industries for a reason.
Think about it (ACTA, SOPA..etc). I was expecting the result to be something
like what happened in Korea, where Samsung And Apple were found guilty and
BOTH had to pay for damages. But this is a ridiculous - Apple has been sued by
numerous competitors and yet it didn't infringe even a single patent? Come
on...clearly this system is biased.

For those who think Apple deserved to win, Apple did not do this to protect
their IP, they are just suppressing their competitors by suing them. Why is
Apple going after HTC and Motorola? I personally own a HTC and it looks and
feels nothing like an iPhone. Apple might have 'innovated' as many claim it to
have, but it has hindered more innovation than it has ever contributed. The
case for HTC, Samsung and others today might be the case for you and me
tomorrow as well, considering we start a phone company tomorrow. We are as
vulnerable as they are. And Apple is the most innovative company in the world?
Come on..innovation by litigation??

Well Apple, your end is very near, which is reflected by your panic, suing
your competitors. This won't last very long and there will be someone to say
'Fuck you' to you very soon. Till then, enjoy your happiness while it lasts.

~~~
mrcharles
Anyone still defending Apple as the underdog now needs to sit up and realize
that Apple is now the 800lb gorilla.

~~~
rickmb
Not really. Take the patent system away, and all Apple has is a nice market
share, a fat war chest and it's own ability to produce interesting products.

Apple has taken the posture of the 800lb gorilla with a questionable legal
maneuver, leveraging a patent systems its competitors were happy to support to
keep smaller players down until it was used against them. And Apple can still
lose the next move in this legal chess game if Google takes them on.

This is very different from for instance the Microsoft of the '90s that had so
much market power of its own it could dictate terms and kill competition
simply with money and threats.

That was a real 800lb gorilla. Apple is playing a very dangerous game by
faking it through dubious legal tactics. But one court decision that doesn't
go their way can completely kill that.

~~~
pcwalton
"Take the patent system away, and all Apple has is a nice market share, a fat
war chest and it's own ability to produce interesting products."

Also the fact that Apple is the most valuable company in the world.

------
doktrin
>> _we wanted something more than a slap on the wrist."_

Wasn't the jury under instructions _not_ to dole out punitive damages? That's
left to the judge, the amount of which has yet to be decided.

Maximum punitive damages are limited to 3x the original amount [1 billion], so
the fact that this number was apparently inflated is non-trivial. [1]

>> _"I was thinking about the patents, and thought, 'If this were my patent,
could I defend it?'" Hogan recalled. "Once I answered that question as yes, it
changed how I looked at things."_

This juror clearly skirted the line of impartiality. I will have to read the
whole interview. The notion of vigilante jurors doling out punishment based on
their own bias is unsettling.

As an aside, it's not clear how Samsung's legal team let this guy onto the
jury in the first place.

[1][http://www.patentlyo.com/patent/2012/08/apple-
wins-105-billi...](http://www.patentlyo.com/patent/2012/08/apple-
wins-105-billion-verdict.html)

~~~
cremnob
All the parties involved are aware what a risk jury trials can be. It's why
many companies settle, and Lucy Koh specifically warned them about this before
the jury began to deliberate. They made their bed as far as I'm concerned. I
do have a problem with the jury being criticized though. This happens in all
high-profile cases where some group of people dislike the decision. Judges are
very protective of juries for this reason.

~~~
slantyyz
>> Lucy Koh specifically warned them about this before the jury began to
deliberate

To me, this is absolutely the most interesting part of the case. I'm wondering
who refused to blink in this game of chicken.

I've seen some reports that Apple approached Samsung with some highball
settlement terms as a starting point for negotiations, but I'm wondering if
Samsung's execs just decided to dig in their heels because of pride.

I'm making a big assumption here, but in Chinese culture, "face"
--<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Face_(sociological_concept)> \-- is a big
deal, especially the higher up you go in the food chain. I've seen relatives
do stupid things just to "save face" or "give face". Not being Korean, I don't
know whether "face" is a big deal, but I know their culture operates on
similar ideas.

~~~
binxbolling
Saving face is huge everywhere in Asia AFAIK. _Shame_ is a driving emotion,
rather than _guilt_ as in Western cultures. So not wanting to shame the
company name could've been a driving factor.

<insert standard disclaimer about generalizations>

------
WildUtah
It's amazing that no matter how much you pay lawyers, they can be this
incompetent.

First they somehow never managed to get the patent review process going that
Google proved could wipe out bogus trivial patents. Then Samsung's legal team
missed deadlines to produce their prior art research. Then they stuffed the
arguments about tablet computer trade dress into the largest part of their
time and won that but failed to save time to make a case about smart phones.

And most importantly, they let an obviously biased holder of silly patents who
feels great pride in them get on the jury and lead it straight to this
conclusion as foreman. Did they sleep through voir dire?

Did the Samsung lawyers deliberately throw the case for some reason? Maybe the
Korean corporate culture rubbed them the wrong way and they simply couldn't
communicate effectively or they were hit with an epidemic of contagious
chronic fatigue or something.

~~~
mrich
I believe they used this trial to buy some time. They have many grounds to
file an appeal now (think of the evidence they introduced too late, which was
rejected). Until then, the verdict will not be final. Meanwhile, their old
products which infringe can be phased out of the market without much cost. The
newer products have their own style (Galaxy S III for example).

The biggest danger they face now is the potential blocking of their most
profitable products from the US market. But they likely can fix this all in
software in the time until this ban can come into effect.

~~~
rst
In US courts, you can't ordinarily introduce new evidence on appeal. You can
argue that the trial court made errors in applying the law, but if those
errors involved excluding evidence, the most you can expect out of that is
another trial. (And even that's pretty rare; if they were counting on being
able to do that, it's a _hell_ of a gamble.)

~~~
mrich
That's interesting. It gives the other argument why they withheld the evidence
(Apple would have countered it) more weight.

------
streptomycin
Well that juror's patent sure is innovative...

[http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-
Parser?Sect2=PTO1&Sec...](http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-
Parser?Sect2=PTO1&Sect2=HITOFF&p=1&u=/netahtml/PTO/search-
bool.html&r=1&f=G&l=50&d=PALL&RefSrch=yes&Query=PN/7352953)

~~~
timc3
Did he just describe a DVD/BluRay video recorder or a HD recorder which the
harddrive is removable (basically all of them)?

That patent is ridiculous.

~~~
ceol
It describes a DVR-like device that has the ability to copy media from the
Internet to some sort of flash drive to later view on a television. It can
also function as a web browser and a video editor.

It's quite specific, so I'm not sure why you find it ridiculous.

~~~
Goronmon
Copying files, even a specific implementation, doesn't seem worthy of patent
protection.

~~~
ceol
That would be true if this was just copying files. It's obviously not.

~~~
tensor
Would you mind explaining the hidden complexity in it? The claims certainly
seem obvious and trivial to me as well.

~~~
ceol
Really? It's pretty specific, and I don't think anything like it exists right
now. You would need a device made specifically to download videos from
numerous sources onto an fixed internal drive. It would also need to be able
to transfer the videos to an internal removable drive (not sure what this
means, possibly SD card or removable HDD?) and play them back, edit them, and
do additional processing to them.

It doesn't sound like any Blu-Ray play I've ever seen. It's more like an
Internet DVR device that also lets you edit videos and play them back on your
TV from the device. That sounds pretty non-trivial to me.

~~~
Goronmon
One of the things you can do with BitTorrent clients is to have the client
look for new torrents in specific locations (new episodes of a show for
instance). The client with download the show to whatever location you
specified, which could include a USB device if you so chose.

That seems pretty similar to me.

------
vladd
The jurors in this case were reviewed by both Apple and Samsung legal teams
during the "Voir dire" process -
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voir_dire#Use_in_the_United_Sta...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voir_dire#Use_in_the_United_States_and_Canada)
.

The process goes like this: each party, taking turns, gets to ask a question
about potential jurors background or their current situation. Jurors that show
potential bias or inability to deliver an independent ruling are thrown out
(either by the judge's decision or by using a limited amount of discretionary
vetoes that each party has).

It's a major failure for Samsung's legal team to allow Hogan to stand,
considering his background. I doubt these lawyers to be ever able to represent
again a tech company in a court of law.

------
sp332
As Groklaw pointed out, the jury was specifically instructed that the damages
awarded should reflect the amount of money lost, _not_ punish or "send a
message" to Samsung. It's also pretty clear that the jury rushed through
things, even if they say they didn't.
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4430341> Samsung will probably use the
jurors' statements in their appeal.

~~~
Retric
They spend 2 and 1/2 days talking about it. Don't forget they had plenty of
time to consider the evidence while it was being presented so the only thing
they need to talk about was what they disagreed on. Which probably was mostly
about how willful Samsung's infringement was, because that's the hardest thing
to determine in cases like this.

~~~
sp332
The 100+ pages of jury instructions were only provided on the 21st. Aside from
their own comments that they "didn't need the jury instructions", there is
this follow-up that shows a lot of inconsistencies in the verdict.
<http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=2012082510525390>

edited

~~~
ryanhuff
These jury instructions were not 100+ pages of narrative. They were mostly
"check the box" questions. I don't know if it's unreasonable to go through
them in a few days if you already had a general feeling that Samsung had done
wrong.

~~~
sp332
You're probably thinking of the ~10-page verdict form? This is the jury
instructions: <http://www.groklaw.net/pdf3/ApplevSamsung-1903.pdf>

~~~
danielweber
Holy cow. I heard people say "100+ pages of Jury Instructions!!" and imagined
some George RR Martin novel. But so many of those pages contain just a few
sentences. Any adult should be able to read that in an hour; marking the
places they really need to concentrate on and reading those later would take
at most another hour.

------
mrcharles
As if pinch to zoom couldn't be suggested by a ten year old when presented
with the problem of zooming on a multi-touch interface.

Software patents are a joke.

~~~
pxlpshr
People hate on software patents like they were hating on the cellphone
industry just 5 years ago.

One company doubled down on their innovation while disrupting their own major
revenue channel. Meanwhile, the many stagnant phone manufactures continued
copy/pasting crap because that's all they knew. BlackBerry executives went so
far as to call Jobs' 2007 iPhone launch a "bluff" and an "impossible feat of
engineering".

Maybe multi-touch is painfully obvious on the surface, but end-to-end
execution and total consumer package made the iPhone what it is today -- and
that wasn't obvious until you held it in your hand, and everything just
clicked. So in that regard, I think it's fair for Apple to protect their
entire pie by defending the slices/key ingredients.

PS. It took a few years before "pinch and zoom" was actually comparable to the
fluidity of iOS. Some implementations on Android were a complete joke.

PPS. I don't disagree that the patent process could use some revisions, but to
dismiss the process entirely is just silly -- including software.

~~~
dsr_
People were right to hate the cellphone industry 5 years ago. The best things
available were Nokia candybar phones -- approaching the Ford Escort in terms
of reliability -- and the Palm Treo, which was more or less the apex of
combining a PDA with a phone without actually doing much integration. People
are currently right to hate cellphone service providers.

As later history would reveal, BlackBerry executives were entirely correct to
consider the iPhone an "impossible feat of engineering" -- from their point of
view. RIM had huge market share, yet couldn't engineer its way out of a
stapled paper bag.

~~~
beedogs
There was also the HTC Wizard, introduced in October 2005.

It was pretty much the best thing out there for quite a while.

------
splamco
The jurors blatantly disregarded the court's instructions. They were to be
thorough, unbiased and apply the law, not send a message. Good chance for a
mistrial.

------
nnq
...I still don't get it why corporations are STUPID enough not to implement a
system where old emails get deleted (in an unrecoverable way) after something
like a week (ok, maybe they would have to invent their own messaging protocol
with DRM-like features baked in, but still, it would totally worth the effort
considering the legal risk of emails) ...or for god's sake, do "important"
communication by voice-calls if not just face-to-face private meetings, but
just don't leave this electronic "paper trail" that can turn back to legally
"blow you up" at any time!

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veyron
For those not watching the stock marker: Nokia (NOK) up nearly 9% on this ...

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mtgx
It seems the whole jury quickly became biased towards the "patent holder"
(whichever patent that may be) "thanks" to Hogan, not to mention they didn't
even bother to consider prior art or to invalidate Apple's patents, which was
a _huge_ thing to consider, but they acted as if it wasn't. Just because a
patent was afforded doesn't mean it was a good one. I'm not too familiar with
how juries work in US, but the whole thing doesn't seem right to me. The jury
should've been completely impartial.

~~~
paul9290
Did you see how Samsung emails noting Samsung was told by Google to back off
from copying Apple and they didnt is what persuaded their decision?

------
beedogs
Honestly, the more these cretins open their mouths, the more I think Tim Cook
might have to commission an "unsend" feature for Mail.app.

~~~
taligent
Well considering only one of the jurors had an iPhone and two had Android
phones maybe it would be Google needing to add this feature ?

------
Pharaoh45
Anybody who confuses say... a Samsung Galaxy S II for ANY version of the
iPhone is just plain stupid.

------
vacri
"sending a message" and "being 100% fair" are mutually exclusive. "Sending a
message" is explicitly overpunishing a transgression so that news gets around
about the harshness of the penalty.

