“This is in the believe it or not category, but the foreman in the Apple v Samsung trial is still talking about the verdict and why the jurors did what they did. And the more he talks, the worse it gets for that verdict. Gizmodo asked him to sit today for live questions. And believe it or not, he did it. And when asked if the jury was ever asking whether or not a patent should have issued, he claims that they never did because that wasn’t their role and the judge told them to assume the patents issued properly and not to second guess that determination. That is so wrong it’s not even just wrong. The verdict form and the jury instructions specifically asked them to address that very question.” Together with the earlier reports, it’s quite clear by now this jury messed up completely. If a device with a keyboard can be found to infringe iPhone design patents, then everything can. This verdict should be flushed down the crapper.
So the foreman of the jury was someone who’s barely able to communicate in writing?
…? What?
A fail, you say? An epic one, perhaps?
That’s just some of the painful things. Maybe he’s just a bad typist or stressed or something but it would surely have made sense to double-check the answers.
Edited 2012-09-05 10:55 UTC
My guess would be ‘fail’ -> ‘fair’.
Maybe he’s dyslectic and has some automatic spelling corrector so all words are spelled the right way, it’s just the wrong words sometimes.
I’m not sure I’d give a stack of papers to someone who’s dyslectic though.
Yes, I think so too but “our judgement was fail” is such an awesome typo.
It would have made him look hip ‘n’ cool, that’s for sure.
And that would be very nice for him, because these are the days of the patent wars and this guy only has one patent. That’s like showing up at D-Day with a water pistol.
Doesn’t appear as though he can read either
As many other people, I was very disappointed with this verdict and I see that the foreman clearly does not have an understanding of the issues at hand.
My problem is that turning trials based on jury’s “competence” is, to me, a very very *very* slippery slope.
I opens the doors to any verdict being discarded by whoever disagrees with it.
That’s one of the flaws of the jury system, IMO.
Not flaming or defending any of the sides that went to court, but genuinely curious:
If the verdict was in favour of Samsung, would all the voices against the foreman still be calling for a re-trial due to jury’s not being fit for purpose?
That depends.
If there were a reasonable argument as to which things were infringement, and did not have prior art, I would agree with those calling foul.
As is, the fact that the patents are essentially all invalid due to being too broad, too obvious, or having prior art, means that because the job of the jury was to rule on the patents, they should have declared them all invalid.
Samsung did copy, that is undeniable.
However, it’s not about the little things they are suing for, because everyone else had already done everything individually before Apple.
All apple did was put them together in a nice, neat package.
Yea with ever word the head juror has spoken on how they came to their verdict you hear how bad they screwed up. Clearly admitting not following the jury instructions. Saying its not their job to look at the patent if it was valid or not. Really this was all down hill.
When one juror was quoted that case was clearly blown that you could tell juror’s tossed out all options of prior art.
As for Samsung design wise coping apple, there was that media player that Samsung released about 1 year before the Iphone that looked pretty similar of design, yea it was an mp3 player but design looks pretty close to me.
I remember one of the juror’s said after day 1 they knew who they were siding with, that right there is not right as jury is supposed to hear ALL the facts before deciding not after day 1.
Edited 2012-09-05 11:33 UTC
Actually it’s a bit more complicated than that, though I doubt the jury faced the real decision.
Do you follow the laws and enforce a law that is morally wrong, or do you bend the laws to do something morally right?
The jury, it seems, just took the “let’s get this done fast, I need to go shopping” route.
English is not my native language, so, I’m not sure what the proper term is, civil responsibility?
I think it’s fair to say that the foreman thought he was doing his duty. But in the US, they have a very strange idea of duty. It is the duty of the individual to sacrifice their freedom for people richer than they, because it’s good for the economy and “jobs”.
Capitalism: it’s the new feudalism.
That’s not it at all.
We do love our capitalism here, but that’s not what’s going on here. This is vigilante sh** from one moron, and apathy from the rest.
The foreman was looking out for his own interests. The foreman holds a shaky patent, and it was his intention to make sure it would be enforceable. Nothing more nothing less.
He correctly understood that the patent system would have melted threatening his shaky patent if they had done the correct thing, and everyone else didn’t care because it wouldn’t affect them and went along with him.
Yes, but it still stems from the belief in the myth that the individual should help the side of the rich because they might one day find themselves on that side through their own “hard work” and “talent”.
It’s all bollocks of course. The first generation of rich people get their through work and talent (often involved in crime), then they keep others down with things like patent farming.
That’s why I say modern capitalism is the new feudalism*. You have an aristocracy based on unfair advantage which self perpetuates because it keeps the peasants hoping for the aristocratic life which means they need to rule in favour of the aristocracy in case they find themselves there** one day.
* I am one patent lawsuit away from screaming “Look! I’m being repressed!”
** Any moistened bints want to lob a scimitar at me?
Last time I checked feature aggregation is not patentable
If it was just as flawed as this one, of course. This is a very important trial, and the voices would be just as loud – if not louder, due to Apple’s vocal fanbase – as they are now.
Possibly true but you wouldn’t be one of those voices would you?
It seems to me from what I have heard from the jury’s deliberation that they seemed to concentrate on the key issues.
Did some Samsung products appear to copy the design of some Apple products including things explicitly covered by Apple patents? Yes.
Was there evidence that this strategy of copying Apple’s products was a deliberate and explicit one? Yes.
Had concerns been raised internally at Samsung and by external partners about this copying strategy? Yes.
Had Apple asked samsung to desist from copying but did Samsung refuse to stop copying? Yes.
I know some people will dispute all or some of the above but there was strong evidence presented in the case to support all those statements being true. Given the evidence the jury’s verdict was not perverse.
I can understand someone taking a position that says all the above can be true but it should be allowed and should be Ok and should go unpunished. I don’t agree with such a position but at least it makes some sense. What I cannot understand, given the evidence presented in court, are those who argue that this is all smoke and none of it happened.
Given your Apple devotion I can forgive you for this, but here in the real world, unlike on the Apple sites you so obviously frequent, we do cover both sides of the story. If I won’t, someone else will in the comments. That’s why comments are so important on OSAlert, and in fact, add a huge amount of the value here. As we’ve discussed before, this doesn’t register with you because of the way your brain handles cognitive dissonance, but that doesn’t make it any less the case.
Apple-centric blogs don’t do this, and its obvious why.
Edited 2012-09-05 17:48 UTC
Thom are you actually saying that if Apple had lost you would have done anything other than celebrate it as justice personified? I just don’t believe you.
If Samsung had won would you have picked apart the trial, verdict, jury deliberation and evidence to show what a flawed decision it was? I just don’t believe that.
Sorry if that offends.
You do know you’re projecting, right?
Based on the fact that you disagree with Thom’s opinion on the verdict, you claim that he is biased and speculate that he would have the opposite opinion if everything were the same but “Samsung” and “Apple” were interchanged. You are clearly not trolling, but maybe you should consider the possibility that you are the one having an emotional reaction, and the resulting absence of logic in your post renders it unconvincing.
I realise that I put that harshly – I’m sorry, I’m just trying to explain why it makes you sound biased.
In your previous post, which I think pretty much echoes how the jury *felt* about the case, you make it clear that like many people, you think the justice system is about justice. It’s not, of course. In any true democracy, like the USA, the justice system is about the *law*. This is a good thing. Justice, like Good and Beauty and so on is important and meaningful and utterly abusable. The law is just a machine – usually works, sometimes broken but ultimately fixable.
It doesn’t matter if, as you say, Samsung blatantly copied Apple. It would of course be unjust and unfair to Apple that Samsung literally steal part of the market from them, but it’s legally irrelevant if Apple’s corresponding patents are invalid in the first place. In that case, the law doesn’t care about nonexistent infringement and inapplicable damages.
From the jury’s point of view it’s confusing that they are directed to a presumption of validity (and indeed lack both the expertise and the resources to systematically and conclusively establish either validity or invalidity) but are then asked to give an opinion on the validity of the patents as part of their evaluation of the infringement and damages.
An argument could be made that a degree of self-auditing should be introduced in the jury system, whereby for example the foreman would have to fill in a brief description of how each task was addressed, which would at least prevent them from skimming past the boring bits when they’d already decided apple == pinch-to-zoom => samsung copied everything, therefore they should be punished. I’m not necessarily claiming that they would be wrong to *feel* that way. I’m claiming that they would then not be doing their job, as they would be deciding what is fair, not how the law applies to the claims.
Thus, I do not think Thom is some kind of Samsung-loving Apple-hater, but that he is concerned by existing flaws in procedure and weaknesses in a system which has not kept up with technology – a system meant to encourage innovation which does no such thing. I believe it will be better for everyone if this is fixed, and therefore it will eventually be fixed, but it will be slow because companies that have learnt to game the system would prefer to maintain the status quo. It isn’t surprising that many geeks are ahead of the curve in this.
The feeling I get from your posts is that you are emotionally invested in the companies involved here, and you have a hard time believing that Thom is not, based on his (many) previous bashings of the actions of Apple.
I, however, don’t believe that Thom is emotionally invested in “anti-Apple”, Samsung or Android. I believe that Thom is emotionally invested in the technology and the future of tinkering geeks. In Thom’s view the actions of Apple may have been in contrast to what he views as a bright and promising future. However, that does not have to lead to him being emotionally invested in anything or everything “anti-Apple”. (We all know Thom owns many Apple devices and thus can at least agree to fund the company.)
The reason why I want to point this out is because I believe that many of us here share that trait with Thom. We are not emotionally invested with any specific company, but instead cherish a possible future of our field of interest, a future of ourselves as individuals, and a future of the society that we live in. The key here is that we may sometime see a certain set of companies either encourage that future which we deem good (or bad) and another set (which may or may not overlap) of companies which prevents it. The end result is that we bash the actions of one set of companies and praises another.
TL;DR:
I think Thom (and many other geeks here) is (often) pissed off at what he believes are the potential consequences of the actions that Apple has made, not necessarily Apple itself.
I’d rather verdicts being discarded by jury incompetence than by plaintiff or defendant’s pocket depth.
If the foreman made similar decisions, I wouldn’t oppose a re-trial. Actually, I think the people against software and design patents in general would prefer no lawsuits based on patents at all, no matter who fired first.
Yes, I agree.
The best scenario would have been no trial at all.
I am far from being an expert in this field (possibly even worst than the foreman!) but something that always intrigued me is how Apple, Inc. takes a de-facto, successful design (ie. laptop design: rectangular foldable computer with screen and keyboard separated) and has no problem with it!
They didn’t “invent” the laptop but are quite happy at selling their own.
Please correct me if I’m seeing this from the wrong angle…
Edited 2012-09-05 11:32 UTC
You should have already realized that it is copying only when someone does the same thing as Apple does, not vice versa.
“Good artists copy great artists steal” – Steve Jobs
edit: http://arb1ter.dyndns.org/images/mouth.jpg
just thought i would add that image to describe when this guy opens his mouth
Edited 2012-09-05 12:07 UTC
It was Pablo Picasso who said that first, and he meant great artists build on what came before them. A great artist will observe a technique, and the great artist will expand on the technique making it their own, while a bad artist will just repeat the technique without any modification.
Really, people seem to often forget that they LITERALLY copied an operating system. They may have well just selected the folder named “FREE KERNELS FOR STEAL” and pressed Command-C*.
In today’s environment, a lot of the stuff in those kernels are probably patentable and certainly a lot more substantial in terms of actual innovation than they’re worthless patents.
* Was never a Mac user so I don’t know if that copies folders. Or maybe they just used a mouse.
If Samsung were found not to have diluted iPhone’s trade dress you would hear a big WTF from me.
Fair is fair. I don’t think that that jury was fair. Simply because Apple had an advocate in the ranks of the jury.
He also acknowledged the fact that people don’t like it. He also said that if you don’t like it then have a public discussion on the matter.
I am really confused by all of this “trade dress” talk. I find that a great many products look almost identical, yet I never hear of this dispute in any other field.
Cars, toasters, televisions, etc. They all look the same to me – I have to look at the nameplate to figure out the brand. (In fact, I think almost all televisions look much more similar to each other than iPhones and Galaxies.)
The only exception I can think of like this is designer handbags. Actually, now that I think about it, there are similarities there (high profit margins, hype generation, litigiousness). But is that really the model we want to base our society/economy on?
Have you seen Samsung Galaxy Ace?
As others are saying I too would call for re-trial. I do admit that I dislike Apple really deeply and I very much enjoy Samsung-hardware, but when it comes to software and design patents I do not want to see such glaring mistakes being made, those would just open the future for even bigger of a mess. No, as much as I’d love to see Samsung prevail I see it much more important that court rulings are in-depth, competent and very, very clear-cut.
Even if it wasn’t on the jury instructions… a juror can make that judgement on the legitimacy of the patent regardless. Juror’s right to nullification may be something the courts don’t like to talk about but is legit in every aspect. People just need to be educated.
+1 for “Flush down the crapper”
I’ve been an Apple customer for many years now and have purchased a sizeable quantity of their products in that time. I’ve never bought a Samsung/Android device, and didn’t really have any desire to, until about a year ago when I became aware of Apple exploiting the broken patent system. The more and more I hear news relating to Apple and their abuse of the patent system, the more I’m growing to despise them. I’m not in need of refreshing any of my existing tech, at the moment, but if I was, right now I’d be purposely avoiding anything from Apple.
On September 12 Apple will release its next iPhone… maybe iPhones?. Maybe we’ll see the iPhone with sliding QWERTY keyboard that the Epic 4G and Captivate Glide are copying. We can also see the 5″ plus iPhablet with note-taking stylus that the Galaxy Note is copying. There could also be the basic iPhone that prepaid customers can purchase no-contract for less than USD $200. And of course, the big star of that show: the 4.7″ plus iPhone that the Galaxy S III is copying!
This is why nobody should buy a single Apple product ever again. They ship a phone in one dictatorial form factor, give no choice to consumers, yet they have to sue out of the market companies that do offer us those choices. They really surpassed Microsoft’s level of bullying.
I talked to a lady at work who was on a jury.
A bus ran into a car. The car was partly in the road because the driver of the car died from a heart attack. The bus company sued the estate and won. I asked how on earth could a dead/dying person be responsible? The poor soul even seemed to try to get off the road. The bus driver was supposed to control his bus! She said it made sense when I said it but in court she got confused and they way the lawyer said it seemed right at the time.
Yeah, because obviously Gizmodo is an unbiased source and could not possibly have an axe to grind against Apple, specially when it comes to legal matters.
I don’t know why some of you are freaking out about this verdict. If it is indeed such a miscarriage of justice, I
am sure Samsung, who is not a poor outfit and can afford great legal counsel, will have no problem taking this verdict into the appeals circuit. No?
Edit: this whole anti-Apple trolling dive this site took is getting ridiculous. I understand you need the hits to stay afloat, but come on…
Edited 2012-09-05 17:49 UTC
american jury, in an american court judging an american company to be right – based on an american jury member owning american patents himself…. and the surprise is where ? (nothing against the US, please don’t get this wrong, but its all to obvious really)
It was one moron on a mission. Everything else is just an unfortunate coincidence.
I’d be interested to know how many jurors own an iDevice vs a Samsung Galaxy device …
This guy definitely needs to learn English. Painful to read replies, when words are missing or in the wrong order.
It’s also easy to notice that the foreman had filled patents in the past, patents that were submitted in full knowledge of having seen prior art.
However he did believe that it was ok – and feasible (we know that much), to enforce patents even thus there is prior art, as long as the items are not 100.00% interchangeable.
This does not actually make sense, as iphones and samsung galaxy devices are also not 100.00% interchangeable, patent would also not apply.