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The dust is settling on the Apple vs Samsung patent trial but still, there’s a lot of unanswered questions in the back of many peoples’ minds on exactly how the jury came to the decision to award Apple $1.049 billion in case against Samsung. What we know is that the jury came to their decision 22 hours after the closing statements, a very short period of time when you factor in they had to deal with hundreds of pages of questions. Some have argued the jury (or any jury for that matter) wasn’t qualified to make such a decision on technical matter such as this. Others have suggested that the jury was obviously biased towards Apple and their products that have embedded themselves upon the psyche of consumers in the US. After all, Apple’s strength has always been in taking relatively unknown technologies and making them popular amongst mainstream consumers.
Well, to help get a better understanding of what was going through the minds of the jurors — as well as how they were able to come to a decision so quickly — jury foreman Vel Hogan spoke with Bloomberg West, spilling all the details on what went on behind closed doors. What’s interesting is that he explains how the jury was initially leaning towards Samsung until they got into the definition of what it means to have a patent in America, and how it shouldn’t be violated under any circumstances (assuming of course that the patent system in the US isn’t in of itself, broken). I’ll let Hogan finish his “tell all,” but when you’re finished watching the interview, be sure to leave your thoughts in the comments. I’d love to hear ’em.
So, the fact that Apple’s software couldn’t run on processors from previous technology and vice versa renders prior art invalid? Where did they get these guys?
They should keep doing interviews. I’m sure Samsung’s legal team is collecting these. They can be used to prove that the jury did not adhere to legal principles and hence the verdict can be overturned. Of course, that depends on how reasonable Lucy Loh plans to be.
Well forget Lucy Loh (since that’s a lost cause). Samsung, at least get some decent lawyers
Problem there is, Apple’s got an exclusive deal with the American Bar Association.
Unfortunately, even if the verdict is overturn, the huge damage has been done already. I heard in a business overview on the radio that Samsung’s shares fell 7%, taking off $12B off of the market capitalization. That’s investment money that will not be working for months the appeal process will take. On the other side Apple’s, RIM’s and Nokia’s shares enjoyed momentary growth in cost, which makes me think that Google seriously underestimated the impact this case would have on overall Android success.
I only hope Samsung gets angry and dead serious, and finds the ways to demolish that douchebag company. Put a time bomb or something in the chips you sell to Apple!
Samsung’s shares dropped, eh? Time to buy! :)
Yawn, and the shares are already rising again. Short term thinking much?
I agree. A design patent has no bearing on functionality. The patent itself doesn’t mention the processor type or ANY code needed to perform the task. This is a bullshit judgement. the patent itself is based and DESIGN ONLY and that DESIGN has existed for decades!
Alright, in my aha moment, I realized that his logic is flawed and can also be used against their verdict. Apples software cannot run on Samsung’s hardware, and vice versa, so any prior art does not count.
Let me re-phrase that a little, since they cannot run the software on the others hardware, his explanation then makes itself invalid toward finding Samsung to have violated any patents.
wonder how much of Crapple’s gazillion dollars bought off jurors?
Doesn’t look like much – jurors such as the example above could have been bought for a used iPod nano
They only needed one. One juror had prior knowledge of patents and the rest of the jury relied on that one juror to lead them through what was legal and what wasn’t. Buy or place him on the jury and your sorted.
samsung paid 1 billion dollar, next year, samsung will earn back that billion dollar from apple through their different department products haha
Samsung hasn’t paid a dime. It’ll take at least 2-3 more years for anyone to pay up anything. By then Samsung could argue those patents are invalid or show proof that since then the design community has adopted elements for common use without Apple defending those patents against anyone else, thus making them invalid. Yes, patent holders must go after infringers or else the patents are invalid.
Samsung needs to calculate an “apple tax” per component they sell to Apple to make up the 1 billion or so prior to anything ever being handed down in appeals court 2-3 years later.
Lastly, Samsung needs to stiff arm Apple. Why should companies like Samsung, Sharp or any others provide Apple with newer technology without using it themselves. Seriously, Apple has effectively trademarked “Retina” even though they didn’t make the panels themselves. Now anyone coming out with a high res screen on their tablet is going to look like they are copying. Granted, Thunderbolt was a flop, but it’s another example of an Apple-first, even though they didn’t help build the technology. Samsung needs to work with Android partners FIRST, prior to offering any new technologies to Apple.
The bigger problem are the other effects. I.e. the stock value of Samsung dropped by frigging 12 Billion as response to the verdict. And the high likelyhood of product bans in the US will hurt them too.
I think the guy was pretty accurate in that Samsung knew of the similarities but pushed forward anyway knowing that they had probably crossed a line or two.
As far as the damages are concerned, he SAYS it’s not punishment, but it’s punishment plain and simple. He’s just dancing around that one with his words, and not well either.
Yeah, he contradicted himself because he previously stated that the damages they awarded were meant to dissuade others from patent infringement. Well, you dissuade by punishment. Sooo….yeah.
Great! Keep shooting off your mouth guy.. Helps Samsung!
I think the verdict against Samsung was clearly based on
1. Race, American company versus Korean company with an all American jury right in the heart of “Apple” country. Similar lawsuits of Apple vs Samsung in other countries did not win anything or anything substantial for Apple. Remember the case against Suzuki SUV for rollover tendency? American SUV would also rollover if the test driver pushed it. Suzuki lost easily because it was also American vs foreign company with an all American jury (US citizens only). Racial line and too much national pride can induce a totally biased judgement.
2. Faulted US patents, they were frivolously given to Apple. The judge should have thrown out the US patents which Apple’s claims were based upon. Rectangular shape, rounded corners for keeping hands safe, fingers’ gesture, all come naturally on touchscreen as they “evolve” technologically. As far as “rubberband” is concerned. The term was widely used in early CAD/CAM system with screen and mouse. I doubt that the jury has ever worked on such system to know. On touch screen where no mouse is attached, any particular fingers’ gestures are just common sense. The jury should look in their own bathroom. Their bathtub’s inside walls are rectangular with rounded corners. Who owns such shape? The jury should also ask themselves how many ways they can hold the fork and spoon, or how many ways Koreans hold their chopsticks to know their fingers better. In God we trust therefore no one except God can dictate how anyone’s fingers are used so to speak.
I 100% agree with you
agree..
The point 1 was exactly what I thought about when the news of the case came…
Agree 100%
Hell, jurors have been quoted as saying that they considered Samsung underdogs going in, and they said one of the reasons for this was the fact that Samsung was not an American company while Apple was.
Jury could well have been biased by the old prejudice of “Made in Japan” where in post WWII days it was assumed that the US innovated, and Asia copied. And to some degree, Asian governments turning a blind eye to software/music/video piracy doesn’t help shake that image.
My son is three, and can tell the difference between an iPhone and a Samsung. It’s ridiculous that non-sense patents are handed out frivolously. I was recently at Best Buy, and Apple has huge apple logos on their products. Who on earth would make the mistake looking at an Apple product? No one, and Apple just got a 1 billion plus dollars for nothing. They essentially were given a patent for snow tires. They need to follow the money, and see if anyone was bought, if so they should face jail time.
Never thought about the race side of it.. Great analysis!
Also it helps that the in God we trust logo is in back of the blood money Apple used to buy the judge and jury. Good old American Just-Us system at its finest.
I’m sorry but Vel Hogan is a complete idiot. They way he explains it, Apple already had the upper had because in their minds apple had CREATED whatever these patents were without knowing that most of these patents are invalid due to prior art. This is why the reform is needed so this can never happen again. I will admit some of the UI does look similar but tasks that the phone can do for example Slide to Unlock is just plain dumb. The jury was full of fools that shouldn’t be in a court room.
ALSO, F this Disqus comment system that requires me to either sign up or log into my facebook.. Seriously?
Should be a Guest login there as well. I’ve seen plenty of those ’round here…
It used to work, but it doesn’t anymore. at least not for me.
I don’t log into my Facebook. LoL!!
Even Hulk Hogan would have better judgment in this scenario.
Welcome.. now u have got bigest choise iphone4 or iphone 4s… ?
No, you also have the Galaxy SIII and the Galaxy Note, these were not effected. Also you have every other Android brand.
For now
When questioned about the validity of the patent, he said
“It wont run on a different processor and vice versa, so we knew it was a valid patent”… what the heck does that mean? Does he even know anything about processors and softwares?
Another thing is he keep referring to the patents as his own and try to defend them. Isn’t this contrary to what the jury is expected to do?
This is a typical case of the blind leading the blind right into the ditch.
Basically he is saying that Apple have a valid patent on something because they do it a different way to how it was done before and it won’t run on the hardware that the previous version ran on. Now even if you don’t know that isn’t how patents work, you’d think that they’d find in favour of Samsung for the exact same reasons. One might think the trial was weighted in Apple’s favour somehow.
Well… except by that logic, some people have hacked Android onto iPhones… http://www.pcworld.com/article/196595/how_to_install_android_on_your_iphone.html
First, the running it on another processor. So since Android Software is compiled for Android, and doesnt run on Apple’s Processor, it clearly is new work. Prior art is what it does, not the actual ability to put that on another device.
Second, by treating each of these patents like his own is creating a bias in his mind. He told each of the jurors to do this as well. They created a clear bias in favor of the patent holder (except clearly the ones Samsung had).
I hope this can be used as evidence in the appeals case.
Ya our system needs to be fixed.
He tainted all the jurors who had no mind of their own and just wanted to go home
Agreed. Like I said jurors are not too bright!
What really kills me is even the 67 year old they listened to believes once one idea was proven to him that all were then the same. WTF? Are you for real?
This guy loves blowing his own trumpet…. what a douche!
I hate Apple so much. I pray they go bankrupt in the very near future.
Once upon a time there was Microsoft and they ruled the entire earth. Today nobody cares about their phones.
nobody cares about their phones anymore because for years and years they had a legitimate platform call pocket pc… when they told developers that their code would no longer work on the windows phone 7 they, like me, jumped ship to android… it doesn’t take too much to lose support from your developer network.
I heard about that. I had a Windows 6.5 phone and that no Windows 6.5 phone would be compatible with Windows 7. Microsoft was going to completely start over.
where did they find this guy
I wonder if this guy ever had his intellectual property stolen. He really thinks that he is protecting something. I hope he doesn’t like Burguer King. It uses round bread with hamburger inside just like Mcdonalds! It’s amazing how I prefer Burguer King…. ^^
Apple 10 vs. Samsung 0……. very suspicious!! very very disturbing about denying facts: jury:”After 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 so we could go on faster. It was bogging us down.”
would you mind to ban your fridge because of rectangle shape?
Something as complicated as patent lawsuits should not be decided by average American jurors.
Very good point “average American jurors”
Says the Apple fanboy.
you’d be suprised, i like android too, im waiting for the next nexus to check it out, i dont have a problem with android, only with samsung, hell i think htc and sony make some sweet looking phones, and i do like stock android ie next nexus hopes
I highly doubt that. You sound like an Apple ballwasher.
If you believe it or not I could really care less, if I’m an apple ballwasher guess that makes you a Samsung dickcleaner
There’s more to the world than the US.
I’m in the UK. We found that not only did Samsung not copy Apple, but that Apple should never have been granted patents on technology that had existed for well over a decade, and certainly not on a form factor. Apple were ordered to take out full page adverts in our newspapers saying that Samsung hadn’t been copying them as well as post that information prominently on their website.
Korea, where Samsung are from, found that both had valid claims and banned both companies offending products as well as giving both a fine. Interestingly Korea is also where LG are based. In 2006 LG showed a new touchscreen product at a trade show. That exact product showed up a year later as the original iPhone. Korea know well that Apple likes to steal from their companies yet still tried the case on its merits.
Only America and Germany have found in favour of Apple throughout the world, and the German case was famous for all the editing Apple made to images of the Galaxy line in order to make them seem more iPhonish (even changing the aspect ratio in comparison shots). If Korea can try this case fairly and not show favouritism to the hometown boy, why can’t America? That is what I find quite hilarious.
” That exact product showed up a year later as the original iPhone” really? if you think it looks exactly the same you need to have your eyes checked.
And if a Samsung looks like an iPhone to you, well… Pot meet kettle.
The oG galaxy s and a whole bunch of variant do look exactly like the 3G but w/e they went to great lengths copy all their icons and interface, and that’s obvious, heck even their charging cables and accesories are modeled after the iPhone, Once again blantant rip off, you’re telling me they couldn’t have been a biiiit more original like say htc?
what charging cable looks like the iphone charger? Pretty sure USB is universal and the iphone uses a propitiatory cable.
If you are referring to the fact that the USB plugs into a wall charger then your just an idiot. I didnt know apple was the only one who could use a charger cable for data transport as well.
Here ya go moron, this is just one tiny example of many, obviously If
You don’t say it you’re retarded:
http://media.idownloadblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/09/Samsung-Charger.png
http://i.imgur.com/qN6n9.jpg
Asus uses the same type of charger as well. Its not just Samsung, its called a industry standard. Blackberry even uses the USB wall dock.
http://cdn.crackberry.com/files/kevin/pearl-3g-powerplug2.jpg
http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7141/6718057541_2c6c3a6986_z.jpg
http://i00.i.aliimg.com/wsphoto/v0/552856942_1/New-40Pin-USB-DATA-Charger-Cable-for-Asus-Eee-Pad-Transformer-Prime-TF201-Tablet.jpg
Clearly Apple is some sort God that they are the only ones who can use a USB charger. And O!M!G they all look the same!
Look close and youll notice they don’t look exactly like apples they have features that that differentiate, but like I said that is just 1 thing I could go on forever abou everything else and trust me there is a LOT, but you know what lets just leave this to the court system to sort out, O!M!G! Wait they already did!
I’m not saying Samsung didnt copy the look of the software and what ever else you want to say. I’m just using your charger comment to show that EVERYONE uses a certain type of charger, not just Samsung cause they want to look like Apple. Unless you are going to start to argue that RIM and Asus copied apple too.
Judging from Apples arguement that all Samsung phones were ugly blocky things, till the iPhone was released, then suddenly all looked exactly like the iPhone, yea, I’d say the iPhone looks EXACTLY like the LG, using Apple logic! (namely, it’s touchscreen).
Seriously? The software couldn’t run on the old hardware, so therefore the hardware design couldnt be prior art? By that logic, I can rip off the old imac design without any fear of litigation since Windows 7 probably wont run on that.
Why are we getting mad at these jurors? The guy said once they figure out how patents work it was an easy decision in Apple’s favor. These people are geniuses, if they figure out the patent mess in 2.5 hours! We tried to make ANY sense of it for years and they figure it out in less than 3 hrs. WOW. And why do you have a guy who has a patent of his own in the jury? And why have the trial in a court 10 miles from Apple? And why have 9 people with no legal education, no patent training, no engineering education make a decision who can impact the whole mobile industry? Why do we have judges and experts and all kind of trained people? I know. Too many questions. But, then, when it comes to Apple’s actions, there are always questions.
This is explains a lot.
Guys, have you heard this news? http://mobile.bloomberg.com/news/2012-08-17/google-s-motorola-files-new-patent-case-against-apple-at-itc.html
Wait, is the jury foreman even an impartial jury? If he is a tech patent owner, wouldn’t he prefer to uphold the cause of patent owner against “alleged” infringement?
It feels like the jury foreman was biased and all other jury just followed his direction like lemmings.
he wrote it all down on his iPhone first then synced it to his iPad. the he illuded to… “I’m not impartial I just hate android” besides… the waters part with my iCrap. The locked down nature of Apple is reason enough to dislike the company for me.
Apple won a popularity that’s it. Them being more common to the general consumer through they did make the touch screen slab phone the most popular in pocket device. But that doesn’t mean they own the design though the patent office would tell you different. Just like phones that flipped to close,slid open or had the blackberry style qwerty ago manufactures designed these types of phone. You can’t deny Apple made popular the touchscreen phone. But other manufacturers did the same thing with designs from the mobile old ages but didn’t sue and try to ban competing devices not that i personally know of at least. But like i said all this trial showed is that Apple is most popular for the touch screen phone design. Not at all surprised Samsung lost. And i followed the trial very closely. Anyways still a phandroid and a huge Samsung fan. But really a huge fan of the tech industry is all aspects just hoping these patent trials don’t hurt the consumer or stifle the mobile industry.
I found it a little bit curious when he answered a question by starting out with “In this country…”
I was thinking the same exact thing. He set it in his mind Samsung was an outsider looking only to copy American patents. It was then he made up his mind.
How is that girl in the interview?
She got the point and the right questions…
Patent system has been corrupted but so has jury system. You are supposed to have jury of your peers – people who know the issues involved and likely the parties involved also. Think about that. We do the exact opposite now and try to get jurors who are totally ignorant of both the parties involved and the issues involved so as to remove bias supposedly. In this case there was the worst of both worlds. One partial peer leading a bunch of ignoramus.
This state’s jurors found OJ Simpson not guilty of murder. I wouldn’t trust a jury in California.
I don’t know sounds like a Apple plant to me.
Beer
I’ll just leave this here…. http://youtu.be/Yf2LgpIX6tY
First thing I heard that’s wrong was when he made up his mind based on the fact that he would “defend the patent if it were his patent”. Think about that. A jury is supposed to make a non-biased decision. If you put yourself on the inside instead of the outside your decision is no longer biased, its offensive or in this case defensive. At that point, logic and fairness goes out the window and it’s all about protecting your own investment and saving face. I do see his point, I’ve always agreed that you shouldn’t be able to violate a patent. The point is, the patent should have never been granted in the first place. Samsung’s argument is that the patent shouldn’t have been valid and this guy basically ignored that and just looked at whether it was violated or not. Bias.
Man I wish I could interview this guy. I would tear him to shreds.
I think what he meant to say was, “Well, Samsung couldn’t offer nearly as much money to sway my opinion as Apple did. As a matter of fact, I’m not sure they even offered bribes… it’s clear who had the better case here.”
He said, “Not all of Samsung’s devices, phones in particular, infringed property rights. There’s other ways that they could accomplish something…Motorola is an example. Just because it has a Droid operating system that may to some seem like it’s Apple-like, it isn’t.”
The question I’d like to ask him in response is:
What’s the difference between Motorola and Samsung? In other words, what makes Samsung’s devices infringe and Motorola’s not infringe?
On another note, he said:
“With that moment I had, I realized that the software on the Apple side could not be placed into the processor on the prior art, and vice versa, and that means that they’re not interchangeable, and that just changed everything right there.”
With this statement, he is literally confessing that the jury failed to properly analyze prior art. I hope this statement is HAMMERED by Samsung in their appeal.
I’ve read a ton of blog sites on this case and have even seen Android fans say that Samsung got what they deserved by copying the iPhone Design. Has anyone ever seen the Samsung F700? It predates the iPhone by over a year. It wasn’t a smartphone, but Android gave Samsung the edge in terms of software. They may have tweaked it some to resemble iOS, but Samsung already had used the hardware design of the original Galaxy S in the F700. The only design they copied were themselves. The F700= Smaller Galaxy S without smartphone software. Go check it out.
The judge didn’t allow them to admit that phone into evidence because Samsung didn’t meet a deadline for submission. Wouldn’t have mattered anyway, the guy in the video said something to the effect of “when looking at prior art, the iPhone operating system would not have worked on the prior art processor / hardware, therefor we determined that it wasn’t valid.”
The whole us patent system is flawed, if you think this is bad check out the Monstanto case
This guy makes no sense “well the apple software couldn’t run on the other hardware so that negated the prior art”. So, by his own words since ios won’t run on the Samsung and Android won’t run on the iphone why does this patent matter? Why didn’t someone ask him that.
Apple should be sued by people who make playing cards, credit cards, etc. Apple obviously stole the same shape with the rounded corners. Almost the exact same size. This is ridiculous.
Start with eight people with no knowledge of patent law and a foreman who probably believes himself an expert because he has a patent. These people then got all their information from lawyers. Then they had to get a complex set of issues right on their very first try. Doomed from the start. The post trial interviews with the jurors doesn’t make the process loo good.