“Samsung has now filed an unredacted version of its motion for judgment as a matter of law, a new trial, and/or remittitur. That’s the one that was originally filed with a redacted section we figured out was about the foreman, Velvin Hogan. The judge ordered it filed unsealed, and so now we get to read all about it. It’s pretty shocking to see the full story. I understand now why Samsung tried to seal it. They call Mr. Hogan untruthful in voir dire (and I gather in media interviews too), accuse him of ‘implied bias’ and of tainting the process by introducing extraneous ‘evidence’ of his own during jury deliberations, all of which calls, Samsung writes, for an evidentiary hearing and a new trial with an unbiased jury as the cure.” It’s a treasure trove of courtroom drama, this. Like this one: Hogan got sued by his former employer Seagate in 1993, causing him to go bankrupt. The lawyer in said case is now married to one of the partners of the law firm representing Samsung in this case. Samsung seems to implicitly – and sometimes explicitly – argue that Hogan had a score to settle in this case, because – get this – Samsung has been Seagate’s largest shareholder since last year. Hogan failed to disclose the Seagate lawsuit during voire dire, which is a pretty serious matter. No matter whose side you’re on, this is John Grisham-worthy.
I think it’s easier than that (though claims might be true, of course) : Apple is a US company, Samsung is not. When the trial is held in US court, there are little chances to get a fair trial, given the economic warfare US and other countries are fighting and the fact Apple is slowly loosing its battle against Samsung.
We read enough articles and opinions (some from experts in that matter) not to think that virdict wasn’t a joke…
Does it really matter from what country a company is?
Especially when that company is publicly traded and outsources manufacturing?
When you’re dealing with typical US citizens, it sure does. Most people here have a tendency to see anything and everything “American” as superior and/or in the right as opposed to anything foreign. It’s a misplaced national pride since, to be quite honest, we really don’t do much when compared to other regions of the world. Most citizens here have been brainwashed into thinking we do everything and the rest of the world is just our playground, both by the media and the flag-wavers.
Irrelevant to your average joe here unless, of course, they lost their job because of outsourcing. They don’t care: If the company is headquartered here and they get the product first, where it’s been made and by whom doesn’t even enter into their mind. It also doesn’t help that those who try to raise awareness of these problems have a way of going overboard in their antics, which only increases the one-sided worldview.
If that were 100% true, then the Atari Jaguar that was / is the only video game system from the 16-bit era and later that was manufactured in the USA. But we know how that went… Americans sadly have accepted that everything is made overseas, even if the main company is here. The only reason Apple survives and succeeds is because of the ‘ooh, it’s shiny’ people (i.e. women and Metrosexuals.)
Is the fact that foreman used his outside knowledge to judge in the matter, and influenced other jurors with that knowledge that was not presented in the court.
That is serious. Very.
Jury man drinking alcohol and taking marijuana during break between jury sessions? Nope.
Jury man laying to judge over question if he can withheld his knowledge for the duration of trail? Yes.
He only needed to mention what happened the last 10 years, his own case was well beyond that.
The courtroom transcripts say otherwise – as clearly mentioned and proven in the article.
Here is the question in, uh, question:
“LET’S CONTINUE WITH THE QUESTIONS.
THE NEXT QUESTION IS, HAVE YOU OR A
FAMILY MEMBER OR SOMEONE VERY CLOSE TO YOU EVER
BEEN INVOLVED IN A LAWSUIT, EITHER AS A PLAINTIFF,
A DEFENDANT, OR AS A WITNESS?”
Nothing about a time period.
Edited 2012-10-03 16:13 UTC
There has to be a reason why he brings up the 10 year period. Maybe someone told him or he misunderstood something. Even if there is no 10 year period, if he believed there was one he didn’t intentionally misled the judge.
But apparently Samsung didn’t do much digging then or they decided to keep him in case they lost so they could use it as a reason for retrail.
Simply legally covering his ass, nothing more. Nothing whatsoever in the court transcripts (which are publicly available) indicates a 10 year limit was ever presented to the jurors in any context. Furthermore, since the case in question (and associated bankruptcy) was > 10 years ago, it also wouldn’t show up in a routine background check, so without him stating it, there would have been no other way to discover it without significantly more time for juror verification than was given. (Judge Koh put some quite severe and unusual time constraints on pretty much every aspect of this case)
I also don’t see Samsung’s follow-up question of, “And have you been involved in other legal cases? If so, please describe them.” Because, otherwise, you are just pointing to a couple of questions that he answered perfectly truthfully.
As I previously pointed out, that was due to the time constraints Judge Koh imposed on the trial, they really couldn’t do as thorough of a juror investigation as they realistically would have liked without cutting into their allotted time for the rest of the case. Furthermore, while his answer may have been truthful, the lawsuit he did disclose was arguably much less relevant to the case than the one he omitted, and his comments in various interviews post-trial have made it clear that he did so deliberately to ensure he got on the jury.
Yes, trials are limited in time. So what? Voire dire doesn’t go on forever, ad infinitum so that every personal fact of every potential juror is laid bare. It is the Court and legal representations responsibility to unearth the most relevant facts, and beyond that it’s the Court’s responsibility to pledge a citizen to uphold the law.
Seems to be a problem with this particular juror in that he doesn’t pay attention to questions and instructions and does his own thing.
That’s fine in many areas of life – usually the only person who gets screwed is you; but jury service is something special where other people’s lives are in your hands and you have to pay attention and confuse yourself
I don’t know the guy, but from what I read he does seem a bit odd which makes it even more odd he got picked as the main man.
To me it seems more logical, if you want to do jury trails, that they at least employ a professional person who leads the jury. Someone who knows the do’s and don’ts.
If I understand correctly, it was the jury that nominated him forman, not the judge nor lawyers.
Yes, I also think that’s the case. They probably picked him because of his age and personality. He seems to be very talkative so chances are he was the most vocal and dominant of the bunch.
No matter who gets picked, capable or not, they should have some one who just tags along to make sure they don’t make a mess of it.
Just like sports have referees I guess.
From what I’ve gathered, the jury picked him because they believed he knew what he was talking about.
This was a very convoluted trial. Massively over-complicated in fact. So I don’t really blame the jury if they were overwhelmed by all the information provided. Not that it excuses Hogan -nor anyone else- influencing other jurors.
And his response is truthful. Not a violation of voire dire.
All I see is Samsung pointing out the poor representation provided by their legal council.
Everyone else is.
There is not and never has been an impartial juror. They ought to quit the entire deal of requesting 70 people to fill 12 slots. Just take the first 12 in and let it rip.
Stupid questions. They asked me if I had bumper stickers, ever protested anything.
Edited 2012-10-03 16:27 UTC
I don’t particularly see what a god has to do with it, but other than that I almost agree. Personally, I don’t see the point of jury trials. Not only is there no such thing as an impartial person, but they also actively weed out any people that have any knowledge whatsoever of the field in question. How, exactly, are you going to get a proper judgement when they do that? In order to judge something correctly, one must at least have some basic grounding in what they are judging. Still, that’s never stopped us before has it? The whole system is one giant cock-up. And no, I’m not saying this because I think Samsung should have won. Personally, I think they should have both been tossed out on their asses and possibly even jailed for wasting the court’s time with this ridiculous crap.
Hm, the most popular deity, in his own book of Abrahamic mythology, regularly displays some ridiculously childish, biased (and so on) behaviour…
Does anybody honestly think that any of this stuff about this juror made any difference to the trials outcome?
The fact of the matter, unless one’s perception is clouded by prejudice, is that there was a lot of evidence that clearly favoured Apple. There was ample evidence that Samsung had explicitly discussed, planned and implemented a deliberate strategy of mimicking Apple and Apple’s products, and that partners such as Google as well as internal Samsung managers had raised concerns about that strategy.
Some people reacted to the verdict as if it was perverse but frankly most such people would have reacted in the same way to that verdict no mater what volume or quality of evidence supporting Apple had been presented. A lot of the reaction to the verdict was not based on a rational and objective analysis but started from the premise that any win by Apple was wrong no matter the circumstances.
This issue raised by Samsung may or may not do them any good, the verdict may or may not be overturned as a result, but we should be under no illusions, this is just a clever wheeze by Samsung’s lawyers to get the clients off. That is what clever lawyers do and that is the way the system works. But whatever the outcome the trial revealed, through the evidence it made public, that Apple were right to assert that Samsung had copied their products. One may have an opinion about what Samsung did and whether it was right or wrong, but the facts are not really in dispute anymore.
“Does anybody honestly think that any of this stuff about this juror made any difference to the trials outcome?”
Absolutely! You need to go read the groklaw coverage on this. The whole thing needs to be thrown out and redone.
Except that Groklaw credibility is close to zero.
That’s news to me!
Sadly, Groklaw is heavily biased. It is too bad too, the used to be a good site for stuff. You would think that a site talking about legal issues would try to remain impartial.
When a site (or person) becomes popular they want to stay popular, Groklaw is no different. They write what their readers want to read.
Yet, Groklaw is still spot-on. They have an almost impeccable track record on the stuff they report on.
I guess reality is biased.
Edited 2012-10-03 20:28 UTC
They have an almost impeccable track record on the stuff they report
I beg to differ, they have screwed it more than once and never taking it back.
Examples?
Let’s start with this one:
http://tirania.org/blog/archive/2007/Jul-31.html
I’m sorry, but you point out bias in a groklaw article by using an article from de Icaza who has a personal beef with the site? The article you point to is also an editorial, and as such contains the authors opinion. You seem to think that opinions and bias are the same thing. They’re not. Editorials are opinion pieces. Like the opinion or not. Bias occurs when facts are distorted or left out to reflect the interests of the author. While PJ is certainly opinionated, she does a fairly good job of separating fact from her opinions on the case.
In fact, if you read the site regularly, you would see she often makes positive statements about the law team from the “other side” of the case. She also is usually very honest about the judges as well, pointing out the good and bad no matter which way they rule.
So while all authors have some bias, I don’t understand the disdain for the site that exists. At the very least, the site provides unedited and search-able copies of most of the court documents.
Edited 2012-10-04 03:48 UTC
Sorry, but I don’t buy it, there is a lot more.
I don’t trust those information manipulators.
While PJ is certainly opinionated
She goes beyond being opinionated, when the OOXML was in discution she was the one spreading more fud, and time proved her wrong.
Grocklaw’s fans are mostly radicals who want to hear all the paranoic and twistted version of the story.
You do believe her? more power to you, I don’t.
And here is another case of Groklaw’s misinformation:
http://tirania.org/blog/archive/2007/Oct-05-2.html
Edited 2012-10-04 04:54 UTC
OOXML? Are you serious? PJ was pretty much spot on about that steaming pile of crap. Microsoft pushed its standard through the ISO. Even now they don’t conform to their own standard. In the process they also pretty much broke the ISO, causing a lot of problem for everyone.
And again, you point to a post by a crack pot who has a beef against PJ over a subject he is wholly invested in. And she wasn’t wrong. Parts of .Net like ASP are still patent encumbered. Oh, and Moonlight, the beacon in the sky for the reason to everyone to use Mono, got cancelled.
Her original point still stands. Microsoft declared war on Linux, so why should anyone trust them. Its not like they would go around extorting money over vague and changing patent claims on software that is clearly open source. Oh wait…..
You are so delusional, what “crap” are you talking about?
OOXML became an ISO standard, tell me, how did that affected ISO? and what with the fact MS didn’t comply entirely with the specification? is not mandatory, just like no browser comply with HTML 5. MS implemented the requirements of the ISO, yeah, even fixing the part of the OOXML specification to make it more open, but hey, Groklaw’s and you don’t care or omit the history.
So don’t try to tell me what happened cause I was also there reading Groklaw’s non sense and the opinionated trolls that follow it.
And again, you point to a post by a crack pot who has a beef against PJ over a subject he is wholly invested in. And she wasn’t wrong. Parts of .Net like ASP are still patent encumbered. Oh, and Moonlight, the beacon in the sky for the reason to everyone to use Mono, got cancelled.
You are clueless, Groklaw was making statements not on ASP.NET or mono, it was making wrong statements on the MS PL, the open source license apache like licesen from MS, so, come back here when you actually read the article.
I was taking your word for the gripe and not doing my fact checking. Guess I shouldn’t have. Groklaw isn’t even the target of that article. Pundit #1 as Miguel puts it, is Steven Vaughan-Nichols. His point was valid, as Miguel spends most of the post talking about how GNU had to battle the same concerns back in the day. He even confirms that the fear exists at Mono as they have rules about such things. Still, as Steven states, people can and do break rules. See the AT&T vs BSD lawsuit for examples of code transfer going both ways.
Pundit #2 appears to be Matt Asay. I am not sure if he is affiliated with Groklaw, but the article was originally posted to Cnet. And if you read the article, the very next line Matt writes after the quoted text is “In other words, it’s not open source. But is it good for developers, anyway?” The article does not in any way say that “Microsoft open sourced .NET”.
So who has the real axe to grind?
Yeah, you are right It was me confusing the article. Sorry.
So while all authors have some bias, I don’t understand the disdain for the site that exists. At the very least, the site provides unedited and search-able copies of most of the court documents.
The unedited documents presented always come with speculations comments from Groklaw’s, since you have admitted that the authors have some bias, I don’t see what are you trying to prove.
How ’bout taking a juror mentioning his last court experience as an answer to the question of “have you ever been involved in a legal proceeding” as a lie and violation of voire dire?
I can’t see how any rational person can make that leap without already having a conclusion they want to occur already set in their head.
Edited 2012-10-03 21:22 UTC
The plot thickens.
http://www.scribd.com/doc/108832665/12-04-30-Apple-Samsung-Teksler-…
One of the more notable documents filed with Judge Lucy Koh’s court in the Apple versus Samsung post-trial motions is a letter from Apple intellectual property licensing director Boris Teskler to his equivalent at Samsung, Seongwoo Kim. The letter outlines a reciprocal patent agreement more in line with actual fair, reasonable, and non-discriminatory (FRAND) terms, rather than Samsung’s proposed 2.4 percent rate of the entire device’s purchase price.
Apple offered to license its FRAND UMTS patents, provided that Samsung “reciprocally agrees to this same, common royalty base, and same methodological approach to royalty rate, in licensing its declared-essential patents to Apple.” Apple’s estimates placed the price at $0.33 per device per royalty for use of the Apple patent portfolio, with the rate applied “to all Samsung units that Apple has not otherwise licensed.” Apple requested a response by May 7, 2012, and no agreement was made.
1. That is an Apple document, and should be viewed as being written to be in their favor (obviously).
2. That document taken at face value is of little interest without knowing exactly what Apple is offering versus what the want Samsung to give up. Its seems fair on face value, until you consider that most of the IP Samsung holds is hardware based and part of this agreement, and much of what Apple is using to get injunctions is software patents NOT covered in this proposed agreement.
3. Patent law does not set any kind of standard on what FRAND is and specifies that the interested parties work out the details. Samsung does not give up any rights when adding patents to a standard.
4. One proposal that came to light during this trial also had Apple asking more for its patents than even Samsung is asking.
5. The jury found that Apple had NO proof that Samsung was negotiating in bad faith or refusing to negotiate.
Because he avoided telling about his other court experiences?
A lie by omission is a lie.
Maybe in your personal moral code or place of worship. Not in Court.
Not in court? I didn’t know lies by omission were allowed in Court. I suppose you have a reference, right? Otherwise it would be just your opinion. Not more valid than renox’s.
The question here isn’t the correctness of the conclusion, but its reliability. If there were procedural errors along the way (as seems to be the case), then the outcome of the case cannot be relied upon and it should be retried.
If you dig deep enough, you can find dirt about anybody on nearly any topic. Now I’m not claiming Samsung or Google are innocent here, all I’m saying is that I’m unsure about whether the jury’s verdict was arrived at via due process.
Another fact of the matter, that even you must admit to, is the fact that Apple didn’t re-invent the phone, no matter how much they claim to. Much of the tech existed before and Apple simply found a nicer way to market it. That is not to say that they haven’t contributed anything, but I simply think that what they have contributed doesn’t warrant such wide protection as they claim they deserve.
People copy all the time from each other, that’s how culture and technology advances. We all stand on the shoulders of those that went before us. The larger question in most people’s minds about this trial (in general) is whether protecting monopolies on some rather vague ideas is going to help advance society or not.
You’re the most religious Apple fanboi on this site, and accuse others of being clouded by prejudice. Funny.
The evidence from the trial revealed that the juror made fraudulent claims (new CPU arch: invention), misleading the jury, and that some products were banned although they were not shown to infringe (one of which was recently overturned). The only thing the trial revealed was that it was a mistrial.
If you even had the slightest idea what you were talking about, you wouldn’t ask such a ridiculous question.
Quite often cases are won or lost primarily on the choices of the jury. Some individuals are more susceptible to some arguments than others are (e.g. you have a clear bias towards Apple so are more susceptible to arguments like “Apple invented all forms of prior art“). So the lawyers profile the potential jurors and try to select the best candidates for their case.
In this instance, Samsung majorly dropped the ball by not vetoing Hogan. The moment they knew he had a patent, they should have dismissed him as existing patent holders are more likely to be sympathetic with other patent holders than those accused of IP ‘theft’.
However the problems didn’t end there. Hogan went above and beyond the call of duty – he pretty much dictated how the other jurors should vote (OK, he didn’t force them into voting a specific way, but his guidance was a massive influence for their decision).
This alone undermines the whole process of having a jury, but what’s worse is that Hogan has prior history (re: the past trial) that gives him clear motivation for a vendetta vote instead of one decided impartially and based upon review of the evidence provided from both parties.
So not only do you have a potentially corrupt juror, but one that also influenced the rest of the jury to vote the same way he had and thus push through an unjust result.
To any sane person (read: anyone not blinded by their own Apple fanaticism), that would agree that this was a clear cut case of an unfair trial; a trial mislead by a single juror with a personal agenda.
So the real question is, does Samsung have enough of a case to get granted a retrial?
Edited 2012-10-03 21:21 UTC
Shouting “they copied! they copied! I’ve said it all the time, they copied! And no one is going to copy my sacred Apple without punishment, pooh! They got what they deserved”.
Please mr. Swash, grow up.
Why are they so sore after this verdict?
Did we see Apple crying fowl after being forced to pay more than a half Billion dollars to Nokia plus ongoing royalties on each iPhone?
Wouldn’t you be if somebody told you you were out of a billion bucks?
Was this on design-related patents, or technology-related ones? The distinction is important because a lot of non-trivial research goes into modern electrical engineering tech (see [1], [2] and [3] for examples of EE labs), whereas it is arguable whether the same goes into design.
[1] http://www.npl.co.uk/upload/img/electromagnetic-anechoic-chamber.jp…
[2] http://www.ece.lsu.edu/labs/images/2012/ashok-lab.jpeg
[3] http://www.ee.buffalo.edu/images/lab_cartwright.jpg
This is a key excerpt. This immediately follows the questioning of Hogan and another prospective juror, a Ms. Rougieri, about the experience with the legal system:
The Court is looking for any legal experience and if they pledge to not let any legal experiences affect their decision making.
The Court goes on to ask about patent experience and if it will color their decision making. (The Google guy doesn’t go through all of the Android (or ChromeOS?) patents that he contributed to or is an assignee.) And so on with other experiences and if those experiences disqualify them.
So what was your point? The juror said in later interviews that he used previous knowledge exactly as he told the judge that he wouldn’t. How does that show Groklaw as anything other than spot on?