Slashdot Mirror
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."
Being judged by an idiot who knows nothing about the law is a cornerstone of our civilization.
That if you were on this jury, that foreman would be valuable ewed as the expert by easily impressed everyman and you'd be arguing how silly his position is while the other jurors shot you down because "he has expertise, where's your patent?" ugh. I am glad for my mental health I was nowhere near that jury room.
Guys, this is just getting started. Samsung isn't going to let a 1BN judgement go un-apealed.
Samsung, though. (This case is about Samsung and not Andriod. Don't get your panties in a knot) really did go out of their way to copy apple design, look and feel. Touchwiz, the Samsung created UI addition to Andriod, really is a (bad) attempt at making devices more apple like. (I know. Ive got a galaxy tab and a galaxy S2 - I rooted them both to remove it)
One of Apple's biggest assets is their design, look, feel, etc (Trade dress). Did you expect apple to take it laying down?
Microsoft Engineering Bill Buxton has this nice collection of multitouch systems going back to the early 80s. Pinch to zoom dates back as early as 1982. This collections of prior art makes it plainly obvious that people "skilled in the art" not only would find something like pinch to zoom obvious, the in fact did and implemented it long before the iPhone ever existed.
Was it implemented on a computer you could hold in your hand? No, simply because the technology was not small enough to fit in your hand. But just because Apple was the first to implement it in your hand, does not mean they were in anyway inventing something novel, unique, and non-obvious that deserves patent protection. Apple made a logical, obvious, iteration to a decades old technology. I don't see how this is possibly a point of contention, and the fact the jurors went the other way on this leads me to believe the headline is 100% correct, or something else fishy is going on.
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 just doesn't make any sense. If the fact that the given prior art is not interchangeable disqualifies it to make Apple's patent obvious, then the fact that Samsung's code is just as not interchangeable should disqualify it too from infringing. Or this is bullshit but then that means Apple's patent is obvious. No matter which is true, I don't see how it can go one way for prior art and the other way for Samsung's code.
Obviously that is the appeal. :o)
The forman, Velvin Hogan is, IMHO, a patent troll. His "invention" is a TiVo, with options for a few minor and obvious additions (removable storage!, how inventive). He filed for the patent 3 years after TiVo first shipped.
Seems to me he's just an opportunistic SOB hoping to make some money from some company who would rather pay than fight. Of course he wants to defend patents against invalidation due to obviousness or prior art. His would be worthless if that were easy to do.
"National Security is the chief cause of national insecurity." - Celine's First Law
Not really. She was repeatedly biased toward Apple. She allowed Apple to show their prior art to prove Samsung copied, but did not allow Samsung to show other prior art which would have invalidated Apple's design patents showing that everyone copies.
That doesn't seem like doing "pretty good". The whole point of a patent case is whether the patent was valid or not. And prior art is the top way to invalidate a patent.
Peter predicted that you would "deliberately forget" creation 2000 years ago...
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.
----------
Something cleverYou are 100% correct. This guy is undoubtedly seeing dollar signs on his own patent, and if the jury had invalidated Apple's patents, I honestly believe that he thinks it would hurt his ability to monetize his own patent. It's very telling to me that he had an "aha" moment not about what the decision should be, but how to "explain" to other jurors why they should side with Apple. It seems to me that he had already made up his mind which way this trial must go, and he was just trying to figure out a way to convince the other jurors to go along with him.
The thing I'm wondering, though, is does that matter? I mean, once a jury has rendered a verdict, can you actually have it overturned because it's later found out that a juror has ulterior motives? Isn't that why the lawyers have an opportunity to strike jurors before the trial starts? And if so, why the hell didn't Samsung's lawyers ask the jury pool if anyone had any patents? It just seems to me that if I were Samsung, I'd want a jury that doesn't have any patent holders on it. Not that there's anything wrong with patent holders, but I would fear that any patent holder on the jury would be financially motivated to push for a system much more in favor of patents and would rule with Apple on the case to protect their own interests, which I'm convinced is what actually happened in this case.
IANAL though, so I can't answer these questions. Maybe someone else here who is a laywer can weigh in.
The later section about how much they studied the instructions do not invalidate his rather shaky interpretation of what counts as prior art, esp since he did not use the same standard to determine what counted as infringement.
They did not follow the jury instructions completely. I was on a jury once (not at all related to patents) and one of the main instructions was to only allow the evidence shown during the trial influence your decision. Since the foreman used his own personal experiences to influence his (and others') decisions, he was not basing his decision on the trial evidence, but his own experiences.
WTB [sig], PST!!!
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.
Ignoring the jury instructions is misconduct.
Go read Groklaw
Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.