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Misunderstanding of Prior Art May Have Led to Apple-Samsung Verdict
One of the interesting tidbits that came out of last week's billion-dollar verdict in Apple v. Samsung was that the jury's foreman, a patent holder himself, was instrumental in leading the other members through the various complicated infringement claims. Now, Groklaw analyzes an interview the man gave with Bloomberg News (video), in which his statements reveal a basic misunderstanding of what qualifies as prior art. Quoting Groklaw:
"In discussing the first patent on the list, he says they got into a discussion about the prior art that was presented at trial. Here's why they discounted it: 'The software on the Apple side could not be placed into the processor on the prior art and vice versa. That means they are not interchangeable. That changed everything right there.' That isn't disqualifying for prior art. It doesn't have to run on the same processor. It doesn't have to run at all. It can be words on a piece of paper. (If you don't believe little old me, here's a lawyer noticing the video too now.) ... The foreman, in answering criticisms, says that the jury paid close attention to the jury instructions. But looking at this one, did they? I'm sure they meant to, and I'm also sure they did their best according to what they understood. But this was an error, and it's one I don't think the judge can ignore, if anyone brings it to her attention."
I had jury duty this year, and I can say from that one experience, that jury's definitely want to do what is right... but they will often fail miserably, and will almost always follow those they feel have more knowledge on the subject at hand. What I saw was a couple very angry people who let their anger cloud their judgement and made them very stubborn and hard to deal with. One seemingly intelligent person who did a lot of steering when it came to the majority of the group, because they saw him as their leader and what he said, no matter what it was, was good enough for them. A couple undecided people who were actually open to listening to both sides, and myself, who had to argue my points again and again to get people to come to their senses. It was a nightmare... and that was a much more simple case than this one. We deliberated for six hours on six points, three of which were clear cut. I can't imagine sitting on a jury for a case of this magnitude and coming to a decision in less than a work week.
One of Apple's biggest assets is their design, look, feel, etc (Trade dress). Did you expect apple to take it laying down?
Eh, Apple is getting screwed either way. Even if they win, they lose. Before this trial, consumers in the US mentally lumped Samsung in with Motorola, Sony, and a half-dozen other also-rans. Now Apple is claiming "Samsung copies our products!", "Consumers can't tell the difference!". The longer this case drags out, the more coverage it gets, and the more consumers are going to believe those claims through repetition.
Apple has rebranded Samsung to be in their league. Normally, you can't buy that kind of advertising at any price. Samsung got a bargain at $1B
This case is a prime candidate for a successful Rule 50 motion, which states essentially that in a jury trial, if a court finds that a jury would not have sufficient evidentiary basis to rule as it did, the judge may overrule the jury's decision or, alternately, vacate the jury's verdict and order a new trial. The judge can't use it to impose his or her own opinion; it has to be a fairly clear-cut case in which the jury acted unreasonably or contrary to law. So, for instance, if a jury finds a criminal defendant not guilty and the judge thinks there was enough evidence to convict, that's too bad. In the Apple-Samsung case, though, there was a clear and articulated misapplication of the prior art standard, which causes the verdict to fail as a matter of law.
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Something cleverIf the fact that finding out that a jury royally fucked up, does not lead to a judgement to be overturned, then I would rather never be judged by my "peer" like in the US system. Imagine that the judgement is not about patent law but a death penalty case. You would be on death row because of a fucktard in the jury decide you are guilty no matter the evidence.
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> What was the jury supposed to do other than to return to consider the item later? They had no choice, they HAD to consider it to arrive at a verdict.
They could have done the obvious thing: NOT SKIP IT.
As it stands, it sounds like they glossed over something because it seemed difficult. There is no taking that back. They refused to tackle the task with which they were entrusted head on. That casts doubt on the whole thing.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
However, he owns a patent. This is an obvious conflict of interest. This would be something like a person who owns and profits from copyright sitting on the jury in a case where someone was being sued for copyright infringement.
If you watch his interview, it's apparent he's factually mistaken horribly in regards to most things patent related. He's also under this Apple-fanboi-esque assumption that a patent must be an identical match in every minute detail to an existing thing for that thing to be considered "prior art." So he's completely ignoring obviousness and likeness, which are key in prior art claims. Making this observation failure is key to the validity of many Apple patents. If something is original and unique just because it has rounded corners, something's really broken. Worse, probably, is that he uses likeness and obviousness to determine the infringement of another thing. So you have a guy who's perfectly willing to take a patent and make a deduction which I can only expect is similar to: "look, these icons are spaced/oriented in this manner, and that's similar to what the Samsung device here has, and there's a button here which is really obvious by the design, even though it's not identical to the Apple patent, so obviously this is infringing." While at the same time making the deduction when presented with evidence of prior art: "well... it wouldn't run on an Apple processor, so it can't be prior art, even if the software is functionally identical and looks identical." Complete absurdity.
Also, he clearly states he was trying to expedite the whole process to avoid being hung up on actually looking at evidence. Sounds like solid grounds for an appeal to me. It appears very clear he had his decision made on day 1 and was influencing the other jurors to ignore evidence and vote the same as him. This makes me curious if being a negligent juror is actually a federal crime. If it's not, it should be.