These are not functional patents, they are design patents. The TV depictions, in terms of design/trade dress show that the design is not novel and as there are multiple such TV/movie examples, obvious.
Exactly, and anyone who deploys many PCs daily or weekly is very unlikely to even consider Windows 8. Windows 8 has enormous switching costs. Any new version of OS has switching costs - testing and migration or redevelopment/replacement of legacy desktop apps, hardware replacement due to the ever increasing minimum platform requirements, dependencies on back office and desktop software roll out or update schedules, tech training on new OS, end user training on new OS and roll out logistics. All of these things costly and consume resources that could be put to use on other initiatives. Large companies are resistant to undertaking a major OS upgrade unless the pain associated with the old OS is too high, or the benefits of the new OS are very high. The tech and user training for Windows 8 with a whole new UI however is going to put it in a new category.
Windows 8 (IMO) doesn't bring significant new functionality to the enterprise. Windows 7 has (I think) 7 more years of official support, so why would anyone who doesn't have to switch? Consumers should still be able to buy Windows 7 machines for another 2 years, and corporations who install from slipstream or images will continue to do so for the foreseeable future.
I could be more clear, I left the "either" out of the sentence, but I only singled out Nokia and RIM as benefiting from suppressing Android. Qualcomm and Intel won't likely be joining either side of the dispute because they license and cross license LTE, WiMAX, HSPA, 3G and GSM technology to/from all smartphone manufacturers. They have more to gain from seeing the smartphone market grow, which would undoubtedly be hurt by more litigation. Apple (AFAIK) doesn't make its cellular/broadband chipsets - it purchases them form Intel and Qualcomm. Ericsson sold its stake in the Sony Ericsson JV and appears to be exiting the handset market, so is likely either neutral towards Google/Android/Apple or hostile towards both Apple and Google due to the impact both Android and iPhones had on their Symbian based products. I wasn't aware the Huawei sold handsets, but if this is true it would potentially put them on the Android side, it depends on how much they earn from licensing their RAND IP.
Nokia is now pretty much a Microsoft proxy and as an also ran in the market place, can only benefit from being a spoiler. RIM is less likely to play the spoiler, but more likely to (eventually) sell its smartphone IP to the highest bidder.
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This is true, but if the Android handset makers play their cards right, they can hit Apple with serial injunctions. Samsung, then Motorola, then LG, then HTC...
Many years is also an exaggeration. If we take Oracle v. Google as an example, Google asked the USPTO to reexamine Oracles asserted patents in February 2011. By April 2012 when the trial started, all but 2 of Oracles claims had been invalidated by the USPTO. 14 months is not many years.
The process is far from over or certain, but as far as we know, we are dealing with a single patent and 2 claims, where Oracle v. Google (by the time the claims has been narrowed) dealt with (I think) 7 different patents and 20 some odd claims.
By refusing to negotiate and pursuing a litigation strategy on the FRAND patents, Apple is leaving themselves open to a far more damaging counter offensive. On the core telecom patents that define the 3G and 4G (LTE) wireless network standards, Samsung is a middle weight contributor of IP. The heavyweights of the LTE IP are LG, Qualcomm, Intel (via InterDigital), Motorola (Google) and Nokia. Additional core telecom IP portfolios are held by Ericsson, RIM, Huawei Corp and HTC.
Qualcomm, Ericsson, RIM, Intel, Huawei and Nokia are unlikely to join any IP counter offensive against Apple because they don't sell smartphone handsets, license technology to both sides or benefit from suppressing Android (Nokia/RIM). But LG, Motorola (Google) and HTC have a vested interest in defending Android and between them have substantial IP portfolios. It's important to note that these companies can not refuse to license their Standard Essential Patents, however Apple has so far refused to negotiate and has pursued a litigation strategy. Apple is not totally without ammunition in the telcomm patents; they were part of the coalition that purchased Nortel's IP, but most of the Nortel portfolio was already cross licensed to other standards contributors so are more useful for defensive purposes. Cross license agreements do not however protect Apple from having to negotiate FRAND license fees with the appropriate patent holders. If they refuse to negotiate, injunctions are in the future.
This is a 2-way street. I'd imagine Samsung is going after an injunction on the FRAND patents in time to hit the iPhone 5 for the Christmas shopping season.
While I generally disregard FloMo as a paid shill, he is right that the patent invalidation process is long and far from predictable. However, I expect that on this particular patent (and additionally on the multi-heuristic search patent) prior art and obviousness will prevail. These are rubbish patents.
Thin clients are not the problem. The challenge with tablets for business is where the data resides. For most businesses, data governance, privacy and security concerns around tablets and cloud computing in general have not been adequately addressed. There is also the presumed need for ubiquitous connectivity which is not always possible or practical. For instance, unless you can intelligently cache and sync local data, tablets are useless on airplanes (aside from Plants vs. Zombies and Angry Birds). Managing local data is not done very well on current tablets. Concepts such as book shelves, play lists and application associations are weak and pathetic compared to a real file system. The only reason the iPad lacks a file system is to prevent users from downloading apps and content outside of iTunes/AppStore.
Additionally, a touch/swipe UI is great for accessing content, but doesn't lend itself to content creation.
It you take the "using a mobile computing device" stuff out of the patent it comes down to looking up an address in a directory (such as the Yellow Pages) and overlaying that on a map. Sounds pretty obvious.
Exactly. Companys say lots of stuff. We are an XXX company, but their Form 10-K tells the real story.
Microsoft Q4-2012 Revenues by Product Line: Windows & Windows Live: $4.15 billion
Server & Tools: $5.09 billion
Business (MS Office and related): $6.3
Online Services Business: $735 million
Entertainment & Devices: $1.78 billion
The last time Apple collapsed, it was because they were arrogant and hostile towards third party application developers and sought to control every aspect of the software channel. Steve Jobs, the genius who push Apple to its dominant position in the early 80's also, as the control freak he was, laid the foundation for the collapse. They also sought to squash third party peripherals providers by tightly controlling the hardware interfaces and BIOS. You could not expand the RAM or, in most cases, add third party peripherals to a Macintosh. I tried to help a friend with a third party RAM expansion on one of those lunch box shaped Macs with the teeny tiny screen. What an abortion - DIP clips clamped onto address latches, extract one of the very few socketed EPROMS to plug in the daughter board, then secure it with a cable tie and som RTV Silcone to an electrolytic capacitor. Apple Fanboys accepted that all of these limitations were usability features - a built in display, no RAM upgrades, limited hard drive upgrades, a one button mouse, etc. Steve Jobs lost a power struggle with the Apple Board and left Apple shortly before it's market share collapsed. Scully is blamed (much of it deservedly) for the collapse and none of the business model failure stick to Jobs.
Fast forward 20 years - in 2008, Apple dominated the smartphone market with the iPhone. iPhone has a very tightly controlled third party app channel, and "features" no Micro SD card, no Micro USB slot and a non-replaceable battery. Their competitor has all of these things, plus a customizable UI, no limitations of 3rd party in-app content and a wider variety of free (or ad supported) apps. Once again, the company has show arrogance and often anti-competitiveness with third party application and content developers. Now Jobs has left the company again - unavoidable this time, but the company has lost none of its arrogance or hostility to third party innovators for the platform. Lets see who gets blamed for the next collapse.
Not really. Apple has a large portfolio of software patents on functional elements of the smart phone and UI, but most of these will eventually be proved worthless because of prior art, obviousness or lack of originality. They also have design patents covering the look and feel, but I suspect most of these will eventually be either invalidated or narrowed to the point where they are worthless.
The core IP that makes a smartphone a smartphone is held by companies such as Motorolla, Bell Labs, Nokia, Eriksson, Samsung and others. Fortunately, as these patents are required for interoperability and standards purposes they must be licensed under FRAND terms, but in the end, these portfolios will prove far more important than the UI, Mobile OS or look and feel patents.
WMDs - let's set the record straight on intelligence.
For months preceding the war, there was real intelligence from real human assets on the ground; UNMOVIC and IAEA agents who repeatedly visited every suspected site and at the US behest and based on US intelligence visited countless other sites and revisited previous sites and found NO EVIDENCE of current, active WMD programs or materials. But this "boots on the ground" evidence was dismissed and ignored because it came from European "Surrender Monkeys" and UN/NGO bureaucrats. The only evidence of WMD programs came from Dick Cheney's special intel unit that didn't have ANY new data. All they did was to re-analyse and re-interpret evidence that the Pentagon and CIA had already analysed. Cheney's group prioritized evidence from unreliable sources such as exiled Kurdish nationalists and downgraded the UNMOVIC and IAEA reports. As far as corroboration from 6 different countries, they didn't corroborate anything; they supported the US analysis based on the reputations of the US intelligence community with assurances of "trust me, there's more". Foreign intelligence agencies were not given access to the raw data, only staged, re-analysed marketing collateral from the Dick Cheney White House. This is the group that presented Winnebegos of Mass Destruction and aluminum tubes as hard evidence. Most of it was not more reliable or threatening than Colin Powell's little bag of corn starch he waved around at the UNSC meeting. This was just window dressing a war served up for Shepard Smith to cheer lead for Fox News.
Apparently subpoenas don't mean much in civil trials. Samsung had subpoenaed the Apple designer responsible for the design of the iPhone and the person named as the designer in at least one of the patents. A key witness for Samsung, Shin Nishibori who formerly worked for Sony, was an internal advocate of a "Sony Style" design as opposed to the "Extrudo" design. Apple eventually settled on the "Sony Style' design that featured rounded corners. Nishibori was expected to testify on the functional aspects of the "Sony Style' design - such as rounded corners so that it would be comfortable in the hand, pocket or when held up to your head, etc. If the design elements are functional, then the design patent is invalid. Unfortunately for Samsung, Mr. Nishibori's status at Apple Computer during the discovery phase went from employee, to long term leave of absence, to non-employee. His lawyer told the court that he would not appear as a witness, citing health issues. However his Twitter account said he was travelling and participating in 10K races in New Zealand and other locations.
Sometimes they simply don't ask any more questions and move on.
If the lawyers say the jury that they have selected is acceptable, it's not the jury's fault any more.
Yes, but the lawyers basis for excluding a juror are based on questions asked by the judge. If the judge doesn't ask the right questions, the lawyers have inadequate information and no reason to use one of their exclusions. So the defendant's (in this case) case is harmed by a potentially biased juror as a result of a lack of rigor on the part of the judge. On would think that would be grounds for a retrial.
No, we don't have a new trial yet. We have a motion from Samsung asking for a judgement as a matter of law and a new trial OR Remititure. The judge hasn't ruled on this yet, and, even if the judge agrees that there was jury misconduct, she has several options. Remittiture means that judge can lower the damages and the plaintiff (Apple) can either accept the lowered award or ask for a new trial.
However it is a FACT that the jury was NOT give ANY instructions around adverse inference. The judge gave Apple and Samsung a choice to have adverse inference instructions against BOTH parties or NONE. They chose NONE.
Mistrial as a result of a juror's failure to disclose pertinent information is a bit of a long short. The courts do not like to overturn jury decisions.
However to be clear, it was not Samsung or Apple who were asking questions it was the judge. When Mr. Hogan answered questions about his 2008 law suit, but failed to disclose his other law suits, Judge Kohshould have asked if there were any other cases, but failed to do so. The judge's failure to probe deeper and Mr. Hogan's failure to fully disclose his past should not be held against Samsung. Samsung doesn't have to prove perjury (which would be difficult as Mr. Hogan's answers were factual, but incomplete), only jury misconduct. My understanding (IANAL) is that the standard for jury misconduct is much lower - innocently answering questions wrongly can result in misconduct. However even if misconduct is shown, Samsung has to prove that the misconduct resulted in a bias. Bias is harder to prove however Mr. Hogan's post-trial statements seem to indicate such bias. He said the trial was the "highlight of my career - my life even" and that he wanted to "send a message to the industry at large that patent infringing is not the right thing to do". Sounds a lot like bias to me.
Samsung has a much stronger case for bias and misconduct involving Mr. Hogan on the claim that he ignored the Judge's instructions to the jury, relied on his own understanding of patent laws, and used his position as jury foreman to convince the jury to rule in favour of Apple. Jurors are not expected to be a clean slate, with NO outside knowledge or experience, however they ARE expected to weigh the evidence presented in the case and the legal issues as explained by the judge. If they have external expertise, they are NOT to use this to persuade or convince other jurors. In post-trial interviews, Mr. Hogan said that he explained to the rest of the jury the standards (his own) for infringement of design patents, functional patents and prior art. This is really the smoking gun. Jurors are supposed to deliberate on the evidence and the points of law as explained in the jury instructions. They are not supposed to conduct their own research (either on evidence or law), experiments, re-enactments, visit the scene of the crime, seek outside evidence, etc. and if they have outside information they MAY NOT share it with other jurors.
What does Steve Jobs have to do with the main thrust of the story and why should anyone care how he listened to music? Apple Fanboys just can't help themselves.
Slashdot Mirror
These are not functional patents, they are design patents. The TV depictions, in terms of design/trade dress show that the design is not novel and as there are multiple such TV/movie examples, obvious.
Exactly, and anyone who deploys many PCs daily or weekly is very unlikely to even consider Windows 8. Windows 8 has enormous switching costs. Any new version of OS has switching costs - testing and migration or redevelopment/replacement of legacy desktop apps, hardware replacement due to the ever increasing minimum platform requirements, dependencies on back office and desktop software roll out or update schedules, tech training on new OS, end user training on new OS and roll out logistics. All of these things costly and consume resources that could be put to use on other initiatives. Large companies are resistant to undertaking a major OS upgrade unless the pain associated with the old OS is too high, or the benefits of the new OS are very high. The tech and user training for Windows 8 with a whole new UI however is going to put it in a new category.
Windows 8 (IMO) doesn't bring significant new functionality to the enterprise. Windows 7 has (I think) 7 more years of official support, so why would anyone who doesn't have to switch? Consumers should still be able to buy Windows 7 machines for another 2 years, and corporations who install from slipstream or images will continue to do so for the foreseeable future.
I could be more clear, I left the "either" out of the sentence, but I only singled out Nokia and RIM as benefiting from suppressing Android. Qualcomm and Intel won't likely be joining either side of the dispute because they license and cross license LTE, WiMAX, HSPA, 3G and GSM technology to/from all smartphone manufacturers. They have more to gain from seeing the smartphone market grow, which would undoubtedly be hurt by more litigation. Apple (AFAIK) doesn't make its cellular/broadband chipsets - it purchases them form Intel and Qualcomm. Ericsson sold its stake in the Sony Ericsson JV and appears to be exiting the handset market, so is likely either neutral towards Google/Android/Apple or hostile towards both Apple and Google due to the impact both Android and iPhones had on their Symbian based products. I wasn't aware the Huawei sold handsets, but if this is true it would potentially put them on the Android side, it depends on how much they earn from licensing their RAND IP.
Nokia is now pretty much a Microsoft proxy and as an also ran in the market place, can only benefit from being a spoiler. RIM is less likely to play the spoiler, but more likely to (eventually) sell its smartphone IP to the highest bidder. .
Shhhh. Apple fanboys are easily confused by too many choices or controls. Besides, it makes life much easier for tech support.
...
...
...
Q: So how do I
Tech Support: Just press the button.
Q: But what about
Tech Support: Press the button.
Q: or
Tech Support: Press the button.
Q: Oh crap, now it's shut down and I've lost all my work!
Tech Support: Don't ever press that button!
This is true, but if the Android handset makers play their cards right, they can hit Apple with serial injunctions. Samsung, then Motorola, then LG, then HTC ...
Many years is also an exaggeration. If we take Oracle v. Google as an example, Google asked the USPTO to reexamine Oracles asserted patents in February 2011. By April 2012 when the trial started, all but 2 of Oracles claims had been invalidated by the USPTO. 14 months is not many years.
The process is far from over or certain, but as far as we know, we are dealing with a single patent and 2 claims, where Oracle v. Google (by the time the claims has been narrowed) dealt with (I think) 7 different patents and 20 some odd claims.
By refusing to negotiate and pursuing a litigation strategy on the FRAND patents, Apple is leaving themselves open to a far more damaging counter offensive. On the core telecom patents that define the 3G and 4G (LTE) wireless network standards, Samsung is a middle weight contributor of IP. The heavyweights of the LTE IP are LG, Qualcomm, Intel (via InterDigital), Motorola (Google) and Nokia. Additional core telecom IP portfolios are held by Ericsson, RIM, Huawei Corp and HTC.
Qualcomm, Ericsson, RIM, Intel, Huawei and Nokia are unlikely to join any IP counter offensive against Apple because they don't sell smartphone handsets, license technology to both sides or benefit from suppressing Android (Nokia/RIM). But LG, Motorola (Google) and HTC have a vested interest in defending Android and between them have substantial IP portfolios. It's important to note that these companies can not refuse to license their Standard Essential Patents, however Apple has so far refused to negotiate and has pursued a litigation strategy. Apple is not totally without ammunition in the telcomm patents; they were part of the coalition that purchased Nortel's IP, but most of the Nortel portfolio was already cross licensed to other standards contributors so are more useful for defensive purposes. Cross license agreements do not however protect Apple from having to negotiate FRAND license fees with the appropriate patent holders. If they refuse to negotiate, injunctions are in the future.
This is a 2-way street. I'd imagine Samsung is going after an injunction on the FRAND patents in time to hit the iPhone 5 for the Christmas shopping season.
While I generally disregard FloMo as a paid shill, he is right that the patent invalidation process is long and far from predictable. However, I expect that on this particular patent (and additionally on the multi-heuristic search patent) prior art and obviousness will prevail. These are rubbish patents.
Thin clients are not the problem. The challenge with tablets for business is where the data resides. For most businesses, data governance, privacy and security concerns around tablets and cloud computing in general have not been adequately addressed. There is also the presumed need for ubiquitous connectivity which is not always possible or practical. For instance, unless you can intelligently cache and sync local data, tablets are useless on airplanes (aside from Plants vs. Zombies and Angry Birds). Managing local data is not done very well on current tablets. Concepts such as book shelves, play lists and application associations are weak and pathetic compared to a real file system. The only reason the iPad lacks a file system is to prevent users from downloading apps and content outside of iTunes/AppStore.
Additionally, a touch/swipe UI is great for accessing content, but doesn't lend itself to content creation.
He can't be an Apple shill, as anyone who has tried to use an iPad for anything useful would understand that this is absurd.
It you take the "using a mobile computing device" stuff out of the patent it comes down to looking up an address in a directory (such as the Yellow Pages) and overlaying that on a map. Sounds pretty obvious.
Exactly. Companys say lots of stuff. We are an XXX company, but their Form 10-K tells the real story.
Microsoft Q4-2012 Revenues by Product Line:
Windows & Windows Live: $4.15 billion
Server & Tools: $5.09 billion
Business (MS Office and related): $6.3
Online Services Business: $735 million
Entertainment & Devices: $1.78 billion
Tells a different story.
You are dead on target here.
The last time Apple collapsed, it was because they were arrogant and hostile towards third party application developers and sought to control every aspect of the software channel. Steve Jobs, the genius who push Apple to its dominant position in the early 80's also, as the control freak he was, laid the foundation for the collapse. They also sought to squash third party peripherals providers by tightly controlling the hardware interfaces and BIOS. You could not expand the RAM or, in most cases, add third party peripherals to a Macintosh. I tried to help a friend with a third party RAM expansion on one of those lunch box shaped Macs with the teeny tiny screen. What an abortion - DIP clips clamped onto address latches, extract one of the very few socketed EPROMS to plug in the daughter board, then secure it with a cable tie and som RTV Silcone to an electrolytic capacitor. Apple Fanboys accepted that all of these limitations were usability features - a built in display, no RAM upgrades, limited hard drive upgrades, a one button mouse, etc. Steve Jobs lost a power struggle with the Apple Board and left Apple shortly before it's market share collapsed. Scully is blamed (much of it deservedly) for the collapse and none of the business model failure stick to Jobs.
Fast forward 20 years - in 2008, Apple dominated the smartphone market with the iPhone. iPhone has a very tightly controlled third party app channel, and "features" no Micro SD card, no Micro USB slot and a non-replaceable battery. Their competitor has all of these things, plus a customizable UI, no limitations of 3rd party in-app content and a wider variety of free (or ad supported) apps. Once again, the company has show arrogance and often anti-competitiveness with third party application and content developers. Now Jobs has left the company again - unavoidable this time, but the company has lost none of its arrogance or hostility to third party innovators for the platform. Lets see who gets blamed for the next collapse.
Not really. Apple has a large portfolio of software patents on functional elements of the smart phone and UI, but most of these will eventually be proved worthless because of prior art, obviousness or lack of originality. They also have design patents covering the look and feel, but I suspect most of these will eventually be either invalidated or narrowed to the point where they are worthless.
The core IP that makes a smartphone a smartphone is held by companies such as Motorolla, Bell Labs, Nokia, Eriksson, Samsung and others. Fortunately, as these patents are required for interoperability and standards purposes they must be licensed under FRAND terms, but in the end, these portfolios will prove far more important than the UI, Mobile OS or look and feel patents.
WMDs - let's set the record straight on intelligence.
For months preceding the war, there was real intelligence from real human assets on the ground; UNMOVIC and IAEA agents who repeatedly visited every suspected site and at the US behest and based on US intelligence visited countless other sites and revisited previous sites and found NO EVIDENCE of current, active WMD programs or materials. But this "boots on the ground" evidence was dismissed and ignored because it came from European "Surrender Monkeys" and UN/NGO bureaucrats. The only evidence of WMD programs came from Dick Cheney's special intel unit that didn't have ANY new data. All they did was to re-analyse and re-interpret evidence that the Pentagon and CIA had already analysed. Cheney's group prioritized evidence from unreliable sources such as exiled Kurdish nationalists and downgraded the UNMOVIC and IAEA reports. As far as corroboration from 6 different countries, they didn't corroborate anything; they supported the US analysis based on the reputations of the US intelligence community with assurances of "trust me, there's more". Foreign intelligence agencies were not given access to the raw data, only staged, re-analysed marketing collateral from the Dick Cheney White House. This is the group that presented Winnebegos of Mass Destruction and aluminum tubes as hard evidence. Most of it was not more reliable or threatening than Colin Powell's little bag of corn starch he waved around at the UNSC meeting. This was just window dressing a war served up for Shepard Smith to cheer lead for Fox News.
Apparently subpoenas don't mean much in civil trials. Samsung had subpoenaed the Apple designer responsible for the design of the iPhone and the person named as the designer in at least one of the patents. A key witness for Samsung, Shin Nishibori who formerly worked for Sony, was an internal advocate of a "Sony Style" design as opposed to the "Extrudo" design. Apple eventually settled on the "Sony Style' design that featured rounded corners. Nishibori was expected to testify on the functional aspects of the "Sony Style' design - such as rounded corners so that it would be comfortable in the hand, pocket or when held up to your head, etc. If the design elements are functional, then the design patent is invalid. Unfortunately for Samsung, Mr. Nishibori's status at Apple Computer during the discovery phase went from employee, to long term leave of absence, to non-employee. His lawyer told the court that he would not appear as a witness, citing health issues. However his Twitter account said he was travelling and participating in 10K races in New Zealand and other locations.
Sometimes they simply don't ask any more questions and move on.
If the lawyers say the jury that they have selected is acceptable, it's not the jury's fault any more.
Yes, but the lawyers basis for excluding a juror are based on questions asked by the judge. If the judge doesn't ask the right questions, the lawyers have inadequate information and no reason to use one of their exclusions. So the defendant's (in this case) case is harmed by a potentially biased juror as a result of a lack of rigor on the part of the judge. On would think that would be grounds for a retrial.
So the judge's failure to ask probing questions that would have (potentially) excluded this juror harmed Samsung. Sounds like cause for a mistrial.
No, we don't have a new trial yet. We have a motion from Samsung asking for a judgement as a matter of law and a new trial OR Remititure. The judge hasn't ruled on this yet, and, even if the judge agrees that there was jury misconduct, she has several options. Remittiture means that judge can lower the damages and the plaintiff (Apple) can either accept the lowered award or ask for a new trial.
However it is a FACT that the jury was NOT give ANY instructions around adverse inference. The judge gave Apple and Samsung a choice to have adverse inference instructions against BOTH parties or NONE. They chose NONE.
The judge, now the lawyers for the plaintiff or defendant ask the questions.
It's not Samsung's lawyers that ask the questions, but the judge.
Mistrial as a result of a juror's failure to disclose pertinent information is a bit of a long short. The courts do not like to overturn jury decisions.
However to be clear, it was not Samsung or Apple who were asking questions it was the judge. When Mr. Hogan answered questions about his 2008 law suit, but failed to disclose his other law suits, Judge Koh should have asked if there were any other cases, but failed to do so. The judge's failure to probe deeper and Mr. Hogan's failure to fully disclose his past should not be held against Samsung. Samsung doesn't have to prove perjury (which would be difficult as Mr. Hogan's answers were factual, but incomplete), only jury misconduct. My understanding (IANAL) is that the standard for jury misconduct is much lower - innocently answering questions wrongly can result in misconduct. However even if misconduct is shown, Samsung has to prove that the misconduct resulted in a bias. Bias is harder to prove however Mr. Hogan's post-trial statements seem to indicate such bias. He said the trial was the "highlight of my career - my life even" and that he wanted to "send a message to the industry at large that patent infringing is not the right thing to do". Sounds a lot like bias to me.
Samsung has a much stronger case for bias and misconduct involving Mr. Hogan on the claim that he ignored the Judge's instructions to the jury, relied on his own understanding of patent laws, and used his position as jury foreman to convince the jury to rule in favour of Apple. Jurors are not expected to be a clean slate, with NO outside knowledge or experience, however they ARE expected to weigh the evidence presented in the case and the legal issues as explained by the judge. If they have external expertise, they are NOT to use this to persuade or convince other jurors. In post-trial interviews, Mr. Hogan said that he explained to the rest of the jury the standards (his own) for infringement of design patents, functional patents and prior art. This is really the smoking gun. Jurors are supposed to deliberate on the evidence and the points of law as explained in the jury instructions. They are not supposed to conduct their own research (either on evidence or law), experiments, re-enactments, visit the scene of the crime, seek outside evidence, etc. and if they have outside information they MAY NOT share it with other jurors.
What does Steve Jobs have to do with the main thrust of the story and why should anyone care how he listened to music? Apple Fanboys just can't help themselves.